This story by Jason Starr was first published by the Williston Observer on August 3.
The Essex Junction wastewater treatment facility was not built to handle what a growing craft brewery flushes into the system.
Last summer, with high-demand waste stretching the facility to its limit, Water Quality Superintendent Chelsea Mandigo organized a test. Each of the three municipalities the facility serves — Williston, Essex and Essex Junction — would simultaneously test the wastewater they were piping in to try and determine where the highest-strength waste was coming from.
Sampling quickly revealed that the most problematic waste was coming from Williston, Mandigo said.
“So we started working backwards,” she said, “and as we worked backwards toward Burlington Beer Company, it was very obvious that was the source.”
Since its founding in 2014, Burlington Beer Company has grown steadily at its Omega Drive location behind the Get Air trampoline park. It took a big leap in 2018 when it increased brewing capacity by nearly 1,000% to 10,000 barrels a year. Its second major leap came three years later, in 2021, when it moved its taproom and restaurant to a 14,000-square-foot space on Flynn Avenue in Burlington, opening up enough space in Williston to double beer production.
The company installed several holding tanks in 2018 to “sidestream” wastewater and send byproduct to an anaerobic digester for conversion to energy. But, according to founder and CEO Joe Lemnah, that system is no longer adequate.
“We’ve grown a lot,” Lemnah said. “We’re making significantly more beer.”
The Town of Williston, meanwhile, is also on a growth spurt with new commercial and residential neighborhoods recently constructed and more on the horizon. It needs a wastewater treatment facility with capacity to handle the anticipated growth.
“Williston wants to keep buying more and more capacity and we don’t have any more to give at this point until we get a handle on (the brewery’s waste stream),” Mandigo said.
With that in mind, the selectboard last month reached an agreement with Lemnah described as “an effort to govern BBCO’s wastewater discharge and ensure compliance with the (town’s) Sewer Use Ordinance.” In it, the town agrees not to enforce any violations of the sewer ordinance against the company and the company agrees to install a state-of-the-art on-site wastewater pretreatment system by next July.
The town also agreed to apply for a state grant on behalf of the company to fund the system. Chip Crawford of Champlin Associates, who is working with the company to install the system, described it as a microbiological reactor (MBR) system that will reduce the strength of the effluent so that it is similar to typical residential wastewater. The material that is separated out will be shipped to a digester for conversion into power, Lemnah said.
“They are the ones that have to prove that it’s going to work,” Williston Public Works Director Bruce Hoar told the selectboard. “We have no reason to think that it won’t.”
In a prepared statement at the selectboard’s July 11 meeting, Lemnah said: “I want to reaffirm Burlington Beer Company’s unwavering commitment to minimizing our impact on the … town’s wastewater treatment plant. We are cognizant of our responsibility as local community members and strive to exceed the standards that uphold the health of our city and its environment.
“We fully understand and embrace the fact that (our) success is intertwined with our ability to be good neighbors and responsible partners with the Town of Williston.”
Until the system is up and running, the agreement lays out a sampling plan to ensure what’s being sent to the wastewater treatment facility does not exceed a certain threshold, measured in “biochemical oxygen demand” (BOD) — a unit of measure used to determine the strength of wastewater. According to Mandigo, the BOD coming from the Burlington Beer Company has been roughly double what the facility receives from residential and commercial buildings.
The sampling is set to begin this month and will be conducted biweekly “by an independent third party consultant paid for by BBCO,” the agreement states. If the samples exceed the threshold, the company will be fined, according to the agreement.
