For years, Rebecca Bissonette and her family have enjoyed access to the North Hero State Park.
They live next door to the 399-acre lakefront park in North Hero and have enjoyed walks, picnics, snowshoeing, swimming and kayaking off its sandy Lake Champlain shore.
A state project to make improvements to the park that would curb vehicular access to the beach is not sitting well with her.
It’s “a horrible plan,” said Bissonette, who suggested it would leave out senior citizens, people with old or disabled dogs and longtime residents who have been driving down to enjoy the beach for years.
“This is the only free place in North Hero where people can access the water for whatever they want — swimming, kayaking, picnics — anything like that. Otherwise, you have to pay to go to one of the other parks,” she said, where, in the summer, finding parking can often be a challenge.
Purchased in 1963, the park is one of three state parks in North Hero and a major wetland and floodplain forest. It was formerly maintained and used as a campground but has in recent years fallen into disrepair.
The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation’s plan to upgrade the park proposes accessibility and stormwater management improvements, while removing old infrastructure and revegetating areas in the former campground.
The proposal, currently awaiting Act 250 approval, is expected to cost roughly $500,000. It would be funded by American Rescue Plan Act money set aside for improving stormwater management in developed parks, according to Joe Tyson, the new northwest parks regional manager.
That work would include changing the mile-long main park road to an accessible walking and bicycling path to the beach and rehabilitating the three 1/3-mile looped walking trails off the main road, according to a plan outlined by state officials last year.
The state parks department said the work will help the park comply with the state’s 3-acre rule under Vermont’s Clean Water Act, which dictates that properties with three or more acres of impervious surface must either implement stormwater control measures to treat all runoff or reduce impervious surface area by at least 25%.
While in favor of improvements at the state park, the decision to remove the paved road has received pushback from many Grand Isle County residents who have long enjoyed vehicular access there.
After an earlier public hearing on the project in 2023, state officials, in response to feedback from residents, expanded the width of the proposed walk/bike path from 8 to 9 feet and added over 4-foot wide grass shoulders to meet stormwater standards on either side, according to the presentation.
A second public hearing in August discussed reconfiguring parking at the entrance with two accessible spots, adding bus parking and green space, removing old campground buildings and adding winter plowing in addition to stormwater management improvements.
Those adjustments and additions have failed to satisfy the plan’s critics, including the chief of the North Hero Volunteer Fire Department.
The new plan for the road to the lake “will greatly affect our abilities to access the areas on the northern end of North Hero,” wrote Michael Murdock in a letter to the state parks department last month.
Like Bissonette, Murdock’s memories of the park stretch back to childhood, when his mother would take him down to the beach. “Growing up here, I’ve used the park to ice fish out of, to hunt out of, and as fire chief, we’ve kind of relied on that being an access to that end of the island.”
While Murdock worries closing the road to vehicles would hamper the ability of children and seniors to enjoy the beach, he is particularly concerned that the proposed 9-feet-wide path may not allow for the passage of some emergency vehicles, particularly in cases when larger or multiple vehicles are trying to enter or exit during an emergency. The state Division of Fire Safety recommends a 20-feet width for fire department access roads, according to Murdock.
Although fire danger in the park is limited as no structures will remain after the renovations, the fire department’s primary concern is emergencies involving recreational users and having adequate access to the lake through the park — something it has historically had since the park opened in the late 1960s, Murdock wrote in his letter to the parks department.
Karl Raacke, North Hero’s selectboard chair and a former fire department member, is also worried about emergency vehicle access.
“My main concern is that when you have an (emergency) situation where you have vehicles coming in and you have vehicles going out, it’s going to make it very difficult there with what they have for the size of the road. Somebody’s going to have to pull off to the side in order to let the other vehicles through,” Raacke said.
But in a December letter, state officials insisted the main access is “not a road. It is a multi-use recreational path similar to and in many cases more substantial than pathways and trails at State and municipal recreation areas around the state.”
Bissonette, who is looped into any changes on the project as a neighbor, said the state is not taking the concerns voiced by area residents seriously. “I think their project falls short of the goals that they say they want to achieve,” she said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Residents push back on state’s plan to renovate North Hero State Park.