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It’s a matter
of discovering
ways to
use wastewater
management
to shape growth,”
says Juli Beth Hinds,
former executive
director of the Mad
River Valley Planning
District (MRVPD)
in central Vermont,
“so the residents of
a community, not
septic regulations,
decide what a town
should look like.”
Hinds, who is
currently director of
planning and zoning
for the city of South
Burlington, VT, wants planners and wastewater
regulators to start talking and sharing expertise.
She earned her own wastewater spurs
in the historic New England town of Warren,
VT, as project manager for an EPA Demonstration
Grant, addressing circumstances that
are becoming increasingly common throughout
the country.
According to the University of Rhode
Island’s (URI) Cooperative Extension Municipal
Watershed Training Program, improved
management of decentralized wastewater
treatment systems has become a challenge for
municipalities such as Warren, where outdated
septic systems not only pose a public
health hazard but also threaten environmental
resources. Elsewhere, coastal communities
like Block Island in Rhode Island are using
wastewater planning to help control growth
that endangers the community’s water resources.
At URI, program coordinator Lorraine
Joubert concludes that with the right technical support
and adequate
funding, even
small communities
with limited staffs
can develop effective
watershedbased
wastewater
treatment systems.
The recommended
approach often
includes innovative/
alternative
technology (I/A) to
achieve a municipality’s
water-quality
goals.
Given the novelty
of proactive
wastewater planning
as an alternative
to designing
systems to comply with arbitrary regulatory
standards, we decided to test Joubert’s hypothesis
by examining the consequences of
wastewater planning in three New England
communities that have grappled with this
challenge. In Warren, a former mill town
of 5,000 adjacent to the popular Sugarbush
ski resort, coordinated wastewater planning
helped the community develop a vision for
what it wanted the town to be. Block Island
is a popular tourist resort that took advantage
of forward-looking state legislation that
underwrites community wastewater planning.
Farther east on Cape Cod, Barnstable
County, MA, has expertise to share about
improving a community’s onsite systems
management through Web-based reporting
and analysis.
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Faced with the dual challenge of an immediate
wastewater crisis and updating its
town plan, Warren opted to challenge the
traditional one-system-fits-all wastewater paradigm and replace outdated parcel-sized septic systems with a
coordinated mix of traditional and alternative decentralized technology.
Warren built one of Vermont’s first alternative-technology
systems for its elementary school, helped raise awareness for coordinated
planning, and was also among the first to conduct a detailed
needs assessment as a precursor to systems design. Project financing
included the demonstration grant in tandem with an EPA State and
Tribal Assistance Grant (STAG) and State Revolving Fund (SRF)
monies. An elaborate program of public outreach was critical to
achieving buy-in from town residents and state regulators.
Warren is located in Vermont’s famed Green Mountains, built
along the banks of the Mad River and Freeman Brook in the manner
typical of New England mill towns in which a source of running
water was critical. It is this original town center that statewide
anti-sprawl initiatives would target for infill development should the
community decide to expand. Bedrock outcrops common throughout
the village and in the rivers suggest the area’s underlying geology.
An ancillary growth center has already been established at the Sugarbush
ski area, which is on national forest land approximately 2.5
miles from the village. Ski area residences and commercial development
are served by a developer-financed private wastewater system.
Land outside the village is zoned for 3–10-acre parcels that will use
town-permitted onsite systems. Neither the large parcels outside the
town nor the ski area was an issue in wastewater planning for what
locals call “the village.”
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The 95 village properties include single-family homes and apartments
plus the town offices, town hall, fire station, post office, elementary
school, and a church. According to former chair of the Warren
Selectboard, Bob Mesner, commercial development is extremely
limited and includes a country store, a pottery shop, a real estate office, and a beauty parlor. Residents do most of their shopping “down the highway.” The village architecture is typical 19th-century New
England, which means large houses and outbuildings constructed
on small lots close to the banks of the river and brook. Potable water
comes from individual-parcel wells, and, except for one seven-parcel
cluster system, wastewater is handled onsite.
For the past 20 years, volunteers have monitored water quality in
Warren’s two rivers, which are popular for swimming and trout fishing.
Weekly results posted at summer swimming holes consistently
showed bacterial contamination in some areas of the two streams, and residents complained about odor they attributed to failing riverfront
septics. In the early 1990s the community conducted a feasibility
study for a conventional villagewide sewer, but both citizens
and the town’s board of selectmen rejected the recommendation
that all properties be connected. Many residents were also concerned
that the study had not established a sufficiently direct connection
between failing systems and water quality. There was also the very
real concern, typical of small communities, that a villagewide system
would cost too much to operate and maintain and residents would
be forced to connect regardless of whether or not their own systems
were functioning. Some residents worried that a villagewide sewer
system would encourage development, changing the character of the
small community, increasing property values and forcing out some
residents.
Wastewater planning was essentially stalled until a 100-year flood
in 1996 exposed septic systems along the river. The following year
residents voted to construct a portion of a traditional sewer collection
system in the village, along with a small 5,000-gpd community
cluster system at Brooks Field, the recreational field adjacent to the
elementary school. The Brooks Field system was designed to serve
the general store, inn, fire station, post office, town offices, and two
residences. The MRVPD, with Hinds at the helm, assisted the town
in obtaining an EPA Special Demonstration Grant. The community
provided the 25% local match as its contribution to the project’s $2
million budget. Because Hinds envisioned an eventual sharing of
resources among the three towns located in the Mad River watershed,
MRVPD managed budgets and work tasks for the Warren project,
assisted with outreach, and organized public presentations and local
committee meetings.
“MRVPD and Stone Environmental developed the original work
plan for the grant application,” says Technical Project Manager Bruce
Douglas, who was then with Stone Environmental in Montpelier, VT.
“Combining our respective planning and technical backgrounds, we
were able to quickly develop a work plan that met the grant program
priorities, which were essentially set by a Congressional committee,
and also the community’s priorities.”
To facilitate planning and help enlist community support for the
project, in 1999 the selectboard authorized a Wastewater Advisory
Committee (WAC) of residents and representatives of the select
board and town government. Although the WAC eventually proved
instrumental to project completion, initially some members were
leery of any kind of organized wastewater approach. As planning
progressed, WAC members and other town representatives, along
with staff from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation
(DEC) and representatives from project consultants Stone
Environmental and Forcier Aldrich & Associates Inc. (FA&A) in
Essex Junction, VT, attended outreach events in EPA demonstration
projects in LaPine, OR, and Block Island, as well as the EPA’s short
course in Seattle. The EPA’s agenda was that Warren would demonstrate
the suitability of alternative onsite systems where conventional
technologies weren’t effective. National experts were also brought in
as a steering committee and completed an engineering peer review of
the project’s design.
Planning began with a feasibility study conducted by Stone and
FA&A. Stone project director Mary Clark describes the aim of the
study as cataloguing individual systems to determine the level at
which each functioned and identifying factors that were contributing
to failures.
“Warren was really the beginning of a new approach to feasibility
studies,” says Clark. “The idea is that instead of arbitrarily defining a service area and demanding everyone hook
up, you first assess the environmental and
public needs.”
The needs assessment was centered
around two fundamental questions: Did the
existing system meet contemporary minimum
design standards, and, if not, was there
space available to install a replacement system
that would pass muster?
“As is typical of many older communities,
Warren’s onsite septic systems were
constructed using best practices at the time
they were built,” says FA&A project engineer
Kevin Camara. “But deterioration due to
age, lack of maintenance, and any number of
other factors had caused many systems not
to perform to acceptable standards. Smallsized
lots, the area’s steep topography, and
shallow bedrock—along with a dense individual
potable-water supply network that included drilled wells and shallow springs in
close proximity to individual onsite wastewater
systems—compounded the problem.”
As described by Clark, the lot-by-lot
needs assessment included four elements: 1)
collecting and evaluating existing information
on the community’s water resources,
water supplies and septic systems; 2) working
with the WAC to collect information
that might not have been obtainable had the
committee not acted as an intermediary with
residents; 3) adding a pilot project for an
alternative system at the Warren Elementary
School; and 4) testing surface waters and
individual drinking water supplies. The basic
question was which of the existing systems
could be managed or replaced and which
properties could not have onsite systems and
had to be connected to a system offsite. The
existing systems were categorized according
to whether they were suitable, marginal, or
not suitable for an onsite system.
The initial round of needs assessment entailed
distributing a questionnaire to property
owners (the response rate was 55%),
walking individual parcels for a cursory view
of conditions, and reviewing information on existing systems, including permit and
GIS file data and any other previous reports.
From this it was determined that most systems
included a concrete septic tank and
leachfield, or a dry well, and that most owners
pumped their tanks regularly. Because
design plans were not available for some
80% of the Warren systems, the consultants
requested that residents sketch their wells
and septic systems in relation to their houses
and the roads. In many cases these sketches
became the only record.
Although the researchers found recent
GIS data layers limited in regard to planning-
quality information, the layers clearly
showed critical soil boundaries, bedrock
outcrops, and water supply wells and their
protective zones, which in many cases overlapped
the septic systems. So many properties
turned up marginal that the selectboard and WAC decided on a second round of
evaluation. This time the consultants opened
septic tanks and pump stations, measured
setbacks to wells and surface waters, handdug
auger soil borings near systems and in
potential replacement sites, and conducted
water-quality sampling (added as an incentive
to secure residents’ cooperation). In all,
55 water-quality tests on a mix of drilled and
shallow wells indicated that approximately
one-third had bacteriological contamination.
Residents were particularly concerned
that some of the individual property owners’
drilled wells tested as poorly as shallow wells.
“We mapped the natural resources,
wells, and wastewater systems from a scientific
standpoint, and everyone looked at
the drawings,” says Hinds. “They saw, for
example, that in one area there was nothing
but ledge under the lots, which made
offsite treatment necessary. In another area
it looked like properties could share an onsite
system, but the soil perk test didn’t look
good. In this case, option A was a very expensive
advanced treatment system. Option
B was to connect to the cluster system. We
decided to make the connection. ... By the end, there was a very strong sense that this
was a collective problem and we were going
to tackle it together.”
The eventual plan was that the town
would construct, own, and maintain the
wastewater infrastructure for the village,
including the currently needed upgrades and
replacements of individual systems. The cost
of future replacements, upgrades, and connections
would be the owners’ responsibility.
Participation in the project was voluntary,
and in an innovative move the town select
board voted to allow village property owners
to join the project even if their systems
conformed to current regulations. The target
was an annual average per-parcel operations
fee of approximately $500.
During the needs assessment, consultants
discovered the elementary school’s septic system
was failing and potentially affecting its
water supply. Built in the 1960s of concrete
aeration chambers, the system was gravity
fed and allowed for little to no dispersal. The
chambers had also settled out of level, and
soil testing indicated they were too close to
bedrock. Additionally, the horizontal separation
to the drilled well was closer than the
minimum required, and high concentrations
of nitrate had been noted in the school’s
well water. Brooks Field had been identified
as the site for an expanded 30,000-gpd
cluster system to serve the village, and the
selectboard requested that additional evaluation
be conducted for a disposal site for the
school’s system. Eventually it was decided to
install the two separate systems on different
areas the same property—the Brooks Field
System for the village and a system for the
elementary school—and use the situation to
demonstrate that alternative technologies are
feasible solutions for this kind of small-scale
system. (In this case, the goal was to save
on dispersal area size along with verticalseparation
requirements to groundwater and
bedrock.)
State regulators, however, were concerned
that the pretreatment technologies designed
by FA&A required only half the area of conventional
systems. Vermont’s DEC worried
that I/A technology might allow the passage
of viruses and that homeowners using I/A
systems wouldn’t maintain them, which
would lead to failures. “This was a challenge,”
says Camara. “At that time, Vermont rules for
small-scale onsite systems as administered
by the Vermont DEC did not allow for the
use of innovative or alternative systems other
than sand filters. The first year of operations
we did a lot of testing of the effluent
for biological oxygen demand (BOD) and
total suspended solids (TSS) to prove that we
could meet the same standards as sand filters.
We had to present data from other systems,
and we were required to monitor what we installed for three years. The town had to
prove that a 30/30 on the BOD and TSS was
being met. The test results turned out to be
in the fives.”
Lack of foresight and coordination on a
state level can in fact be a potential stumbling
block for communities interested in
alternative technologies. To get Warren’s
wastewater approach approved required
outreach to two different state divisions and
three state programs. The state DEC administers
the regulations of two independently
functioning programs for onsite systems and
a third for planning, constructing, and funding
municipal wastewater treatment facilities.
Approval for Warren’s mixed decentralized
wastewater management system needed buyin
from all three programs whose staffs did
not have a background of working together
and weren’t necessarily familiar with each
other’s programs. “The project provided an
opportunity to allow the DEC programs to
interact in a new way,” says Douglas, who
now works with FA&A. “As the project progressed,
DEC’s comfort level with decentralized
approaches significantly improved.”
As Hinds points out, Vermont lagged
behind in regulation of onsite systems. In
Rhode Island, towns are eligible for state
funds to develop wastewater management
plans that outline how decentralized systems
will be managed. “Rhode Island,” says Hinds,
“has taken a leadership role in the relationship
between desirable growth patterns and
necessary infrastructure.” But coincidentally
with the Warren project, Vermont legislators
were struggling with the issue of onsite systems,
particularly establishing statewide standards,
thereby limiting frequent inconsistencies
perpetrated by common exemptions to
current regulations. Finally, in 2002, three
years after the Warren project got under way,
the legislature passed S-27, a bill designed to
eventually bring all small-scale septic systems
under the same set of standards. The DEC
also revised its regulations to include a process
for approving alternative technologies.
Meanwhile, in Warren, things were getting
complicated. According to Camara, the
expanded needs assessment turned up only
three existing onsite systems that met the
Vermont Small-Scale Wastewater Rules, and
it had become obvious that it would be very
difficult, if not impossible, to construct replacement
systems on a number of the participating
village properties. “No two properties
had the same design requirements,”
says Camara, “and each required individual
designs and special construction.” In the
end, the range of solutions installed in Warren
(not including the school) went from
upgrading existing systems to connecting to
one of two offsite cluster systems.
“There were three primary factors that
affected significant design changes between
the needs assessment and what was actually
designed and installed,” says FA&A project
manager Don Phillips. “The first was
the properties that actually volunteered to
participate; the second was availability of
property we had originally targeted for cluster-
site dispersal fields; and the third [was]
actual onsite soil conditions. We had originally
envisioned I/A technology would be
used on residential sites where conventional
technology couldn’t be used, but the only I/A
system turned out to be the school’s.”
“The first priority,” says Douglas, “was
looking for onsite capacity. The soil and
site evaluations revealed that sites that had
area available for onsite were all suitable for
conventional systems. So I/A wasn’t needed.
Although the school’s I/A project was not
envisioned as part of the EPA demonstration
project, it enabled us to get buy-in for I/A
systems from the state and the town. Residents
figured if it was safe for the schoolyard
it was safe for their backyard. We had
reviewed research from around the country
and were able to assure them that their perceived risk regarding viruses was not an
issue. We finally agreed to call it a pilot study,
and as a pilot project within the demonstration
project the school’s system was a critical
turning point in the overall project.
“Another turning point was the drinking-
water results. After residents saw the
isolation distances between their water supplies
and their septic systems and we had
the water-quality data to reinforce their concerns,
the community became much more
engaged.”
Even with this, it took six months and
extensive community outreach to enlist
participation in the project. “We developed
a system of commitment letters,” says Phillips.
“It was not only a commitment that the
property owners would volunteer to participate,
but also that they would provide information
needed about their property that included
an easement that allowed surveying,
hydraulic conductivity testing, and test pits
for soil profile evaluation.” To facilitate the
process of securing commitments, the town
hired a project coordinator whose job it was
to interface between the town, consultants,
and property owners. Phillips says this public
outreach was critical to achieving the needed
minimum 75% buy-in for the project to
proceed. (The participation rate is now estimated
at 80%–90%.)
The immediate priority was to replace
the school’s failing system, and design and
construction were pushed ahead. Designed
for a maximum daily flow of 5,000 gallons,
the system consisted of an existing 4,000-
gallon concrete septic tank with new access
risers/covers, a new 3,000-gallon concrete
septic tank with effluent filter, a new 5,000-
gallon fiberglass recirculation/blend tank
and pumping equipment, 12 new Advantex
textile filters, a new 3,000-gallon fiberglass
dosing pump station, 980 lf of new 3-inch
PVC force main, and a new, shallow, gravelless
dispersal system.
The secondary level treatment system
allowed a 50% reduction in the size of a
traditional dispersal field (which allowed
the dispersal system to fit the available site).
Due to the extreme need for a replacement
system, the design was initiated in June 2000.
Construction started on Nov. 9, and the
system was substantially completed on Dec.
15, 2000, which means that only six months
elapsed from initial design to construction
and start-up.
“Because of the bedrock issue,” says Camara,
“we ended up purchasing fiberglass
low-profile tanks for the project, four-feet
in diameter. Generally, in Warren, we were
dealing with some pretty shallow depth to
bedrock, and being able to fit things in the
ground became an issue. Also, part of the
EPA Demonstration Project Grant workplan
was to include telemetry of the wastewater
systems. The idea was to demonstrate that
you could save operations and maintenance
expense because an operator would only
have to physically inspect the systems once
every three or four weeks, as opposed to
weekly. It was never envisioned that the system
would need a full-time operator.”
The final needs assessment was issued
in April 2003, after which the process of
final design and formalizing agreements for
participating properties got under way. The
project was constructed in two construction
contracts. Contract No. 1 in 2003 included
the Brooks Field dispersal field enlargement,
piping, tanks, and part of the collection system.
Contract No. 2 began the next year and
included two managed onsite systems with
upgrades to their septic tanks, six individual
onsite replacement systems, three systems
connected to the smaller, 2,000-gpd cluster
system, individual water meters (the town
wanted to encourage water conservation and
charge 30% of the wastewater fee based on
water usage), and components that connected
individual STEP systems with Brooks Field.
The price for Warren’s coordinated
wastewater fix was $4,623,800, about $2.5
million of which was construction costs. In
addition to the EPA Demonstration Grant
(the first awarded to a Vermont municipality),
other sources of funding included the
EPA STAG, a special appropriations grant
Vermont’s congressional delegation helped
secure (the first time in New England this
was combined with an EPA Demonstration
Grant), a Vermont state pollution abatement
grant, also called a dry-weather grant (35%
on all construction from a point of eligibility),
and a Vermont SRF loan. According
to Clark, the dry-weather grant was critical
to making the Warren project work. “Once
a community is committed to proceeding
with a project, it must identify the failed
systems that may be directly connected to
surface waters to qualify for funding, despite
the fact that typically additional failures
may be found during the final design and
construction phases that increase the total
grant award. In Warren, the dry-weather
grant allows up to 35% grant funding for all
construction costs from a property where
there is a discharging system to the Brooks
Field cluster system.”
The first year’s operations and maintenance
cost for a single family home of three
bedrooms was $515 per year. The cost of
the 20-year SRF loan is assessed on all town
properties as part of the town tax.
“Communities facing pollution challenges
where traditional sewers and point
discharges aren’t feasible for their developed
village centers need a new way to evaluate
the environmental and public health impacts
from onsite septic systems,” says Clark.
“When science-based needs are identified,
a range of possible solutions can emerge.
In Warren, active public involvement in the
needs assessment planning process led to
the collection of better information regarding
onsite conditions and increased public
understanding of potential impacts to drinking
water supplies and surface waters. In the
long run this involvement led to support for
the proposed solutions.
“The Brooks Field cluster system was
expanded to a 30,000-gpd cluster to serve
the majority of village properties. State permit
requirements allow for fewer analyses
for clusters serving pre-existing uses, which
means that the town wasn’t required to conduct
groundwater sampling when it decided
to expand the Brooks Field seven-parcel
cluster system from 5,000 gpd to 30,000 gpd.
This means, however, that there can be no
growth in the village that exceeds ‘pre-existing’
use status for properties connecting
this cluster system until sampling and analysis
is accepted by the DEC. There is also
large discrepancy between the design flows
and actual flows going into the Brooks Field
system. Once a system is online for a year
more, actual meter readings may be used
allow for additional wastewater flows into
the system. Deep groundwater monitoring
wells (close to 100 feet) have been installed
near this system, and Stone Environmental
and FA&A are currently assisting the town
obtaining the scientific evidence to allow
limited growth.”
“What Warren did,” says Camara, “was
develop a prototype for future small-scale
decentralized wastewater projects throughout
Vermont.”
But regarding models, Douglas points
out that what’s important about Warren
that it was successful not only in utilizing
community-based decision-making but
in maintaining the historic characteristics
of a small New England village, a goal that
was critical to residents—and to the implementation
of the decentralized wastewater
approach they eventually decided on.
PENELOPE GRENOBLE O’MALLEY specializes in environmental topics.
OW - July/August 2006 |
