A short-lived but intense storm Tuesday evening caused felled trees, power outages, and unsafe waters in Burlington.
The city’s Department of Public Works reported that during a widespread power outage caused by the storm, Burlington’s main wastewater treatment plant switched over to backup generation. However, disinfection pumps did not start for 13 minutes.
The city estimates that between 1 million and 1.5 million gallons of treated, but not fully disinfected, stormwater was discharged into the lake in that 13 minutes.
The pumps are supposed to kick in immediately, according to Rob Goulding, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works. The reason why that didn’t happen yesterday is still being investigated, he said.
“Typically the vast majority of that flow is stormwater, mixed with whatever wastewater was in the system at the time,” Goulding said. “I would expect it was about 90% stormwater.”
The water enters the lake about a half-mile offshore, past the breakwater, through a perforated tube — but because of state law, the city still closes all beaches within a mile of that area when the wastewater enters the lake, Goulding said.
As a result, the city announced that it is advising against “contact recreation” like swimming at Oakledge Cove, Blanchard Beach, Blodgett Access and Perkins Pier for the 48 hours following the storm.
A multi-million dollar project to upgrade the city’s wastewater treatment system approved by voters in 2018 is set to begin soon, which Goulding hopes will prevent stormwater overflows in future.
Additionally, a number of large, downed trees caused North Beach to close Wednesday morning.
VJ Comai, Burlington’s city arborist, said the “very brief but obviously very high wind” storm had his team out until 2:30 a.m. Wednesday trying to respond to calls and clear roads.
Wednesday morning, the crews focused their efforts at North Beach, where he said five “very large” trees were uprooted along the water. Comai said because of the warm weather and popularity of the beach, it was important for them to clear the area as soon as possible.
“It was priority to get this cleaned up and safe , then we’re moving on to clean up other sites,” he said. “I’ve got a clipboard full of them.”
Once the crews leave North Beach Wednesday afternoon, Comai said they’ll return to trees that were partially cleared last night, to take down the remainders of the trees that are standing, but no longer safe.
“We’ll be doing cleanup the rest of the week I’m sure,” Comai said. “Right now, we’re just trying to triage.”
He said they haven’t seen or heard of any damage to houses or vehicles so far. Goulding also noted that there has been no reported damage to streets or sidewalks from the storm.
Darren Springer, general manager of Burlington Electric, said the storm did, however, cause “pretty widespread” outages — with 4,400 customers losing power Tuesday night. He said most of the outages were caused by a pole that was downed near the waterfront railyard, and a few others caused by blown fuses.
Springer said seven customers still lack power, as crews work to fix the pole, though the majority had their power restored within a few hours.
He said Burlington has a lot of underground electric infrastructure, meaning usually, when other areas of the state get hit hard, Burlington avoids some of the worst outages. But last night, he said, the storm was just too strong.
“For us at least, this was a significant one,” he said. “We don’t see 4,400 outages very typically in Burlington.”
