A day after a Burlington sewer pipe broke in the swollen Winooski River, the city said it had made progress toward stopping the flow of untreated wastewater into the river and Lake Champlain.
Early Wednesday morning, a sewer line that runs across the river bottom near the city’s North Avenue wastewater treatment plant broke as the Winooski flooded. The water is so turbulent that it is unsafe for a diver to assess the broken pipe or make any repairs.
After the break, Burlington Public Works Director Chapin Spencer said the city made a “quick fix” to slow down the flow by about half. The break initially created a vacuum that pulled waste from two other sewer lines in the city’s New North End. Public works staff members were able to close a connection so that the other two lines were redirected to a treatment plant, instead of being sucked into the river through the broken pipe, he said.
Spencer said the city estimates that, after the initial fix, around 350,000 gallons a day are entering the river and Lake Champlain. Beaches within a mile of the mouth of the river have been closed to swimming.
The city hopes to further slow the flow into the river by using pumper trucks at a manhole near the break. The trucks would be able to haul away about 150,000 gallons of wastewater per day to be treated at the plant.
However, those steps would not keep all sewage from leaking out of the broken pipe, so the city wants to build a 5,000-foot bypass to treat the rest. Spencer said he hopes that work can begin early next week and could take seven to 10 days to complete.
In the meantime, city officials are asking all sewer users in an eastern section of the city’s New North End to conserve wastewater use and have released a map of the buildings impacted. Spencer said conservation efforts would include flushing toilets only when needed and taking shorter showers.
The city set up an information page on its website to share updates about the break.
Spencer underscored that the city’s drinking water was not affected by the sewer leak and that the city tests the water that’s going through the water treatment plant.
“The drinking water is absolutely safe and drinkable,” he said.
The pumper trucks and bypass pipes are only meant to be a temporary fix. The next step toward a long-term solution, Spencer said, is to put a diver in the river to identify what kind of work is needed at the source of the leak. Options include a sleeve or underwater welding, but Spencer also expressed interest in a “generational improvement” that would make for a more resilient pipe.
The broken sewer line goes across the bottom of the Winooski River. It leads toward the plant in a straight shot from the eastern side of the New North End. Spencer said the pipe was placed in the 1950s; today, “directional boring or other technologies” would have been used instead.
“We would not design it the same way today,” he said.
