RUTLAND — Workers are busy installing a new water collection system on Library Avenue that will separate stormwater from wastewater, part of the city’s ongoing effort to reduce combined sewer overflows that load contaminants into Otter Creek and, eventually, Lake Champlain.
Rutland has spent about $17 million on wastewater projects since the 1980s, but the city estimates it will need to invest $40 million more to improve area water quality.
Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., visited the Library Avenue project Thursday, along with Rutland Mayor David Allaire and Jeff Wennberg, city public works commissioner, to explain how a bill currently moving through Congress could help fund the wastewater projects.
The Moving Forward Act, a $1.5 trillion plan introduced on June 11 and passed by the House on July 1, would allocate money for infrastructure projects — from improved roadways to child care facilities to affordable housing, broadband and clean water.
Like many other Vermont cities, Rutland’s wastewater treatment facility, which was built in the early 1960s, funnels wastewater and stormwater into the same system. It was designed for “dry weather flows,” Wennberg told reporters Thursday. It cannot handle excess rainwater, which spills over into streams nearby.
“Ideally, you want to treat everything,” Wennberg said. “Stormwater is not radically better than what you flush down the toilet. It’s very, very similar. The concentrations are less, but the volumes are higher, so the amount of stuff you’re delivering to the streams is comparable.”
Wastewater infrastructure upgrades across the state are necessary to protect access to clean water for human consumption and conservation of streams, rivers and Lake Champlain. The projects are expensive and complex.
“The number one concern about overflows is really not impact on habitat,” Wennberg said. “It’s really human health — the pathogens.”
East Creek and Otter Creek have taken on more than 1 million gallons of stormwater from the Rutland area since June 23 due to wet weather events. The sections of East Creek and Otter Creek that run through Rutland have higher-than-acceptable levels of E. coli, according to the state’s 2018 list of impaired waters.
The Library Avenue project, which began on June 1, is the largest project to come out of a bond approved by voters several years ago.
“Even when this project is done,” Wennberg said, “we still have, as the congressman correctly stated, another 20 to 30 years of projects to do.”
He added that the city may need up to $40 million in additional funding to address the city’s stormwater problem.
“That’s the critical thing, is that we’ve had a lot of federal and state support in the past, and we are never going to make it to where we need to be without continued federal and state support,” he said.
Welch sees many potential avenues for the bill’s funding in Vermont, and said he became well-acquainted with infrastructure challenges faced by communities, including Rutland, during his time as a state senator and in his early days as a congressman.
He detailed a moment from his early days in Congress when the Rutland mayor showed him a pipe crusted with hardened gunk.
“He told me that that pipe is from the Civil War, and it’s still in the ground,” Welch said. “Rutland has been making a huge effort to improve this. It’s important for the quality of the drinking water, and it’s really important for the quality of the water in our lakes and streams.”
If passed, the bill could help fund a variety of infrastructure projects in Vermont.
“It’s a real blueprint that acknowledges that the federal government has to help our local communities, like Rutland, and around the state,” Welch said, “who have really been contending with improving their cities, and they need some financial help to do it.”
