The systems that treat both drinking water and wastewater in Vermont’s largest city are obsolete and decaying, and extensive, costly upgrades could be in the works.
After years of patchwork fixes, Burlington public works officials say the solution is two bonds totaling $225 million proposed for the Town Meeting Day ballot in March. The projects could more than double residents’ water bills over the next decade.
City councilors say the price tag is too high at a time when Burlington is already facing untenable spending pressures, including another multimillion-dollar budget gap.
“I just don’t see how we can ask voters to support it all,” City Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5) said.
Public works officials are looking for ways to tamp down the cost, but they say the price of inaction would be steep.
“Municipal water and wastewater systems are foundational to the operation of the community,” Burlington Public Works Director Chapin Spencer said. “Unfortunately, we’re on borrowed time.”
Time hasn’t been kind to the city’s system. A recent tour of the main wastewater plant near Perkins Pier revealed corroded pipes and ancient equipment MacGyvered with parts ordered from eBay.
The edge of a concrete pool of bubbling brown water, known as an aerator, had a crack large enough to fit a man’s hand. In the aptly named “sludge room,” where smelly solid waste is carried by a conveyor belt, staff are wary of using certain machines, lest they break one they can’t fix. A big, red button on a control panel labeled “E-Stop,” used in emergencies, already has been rewired once.
The city last issued a wastewater bond in 2018, for $30 million. It paid to fix some equipment, reline century-old pipes and install infrastructure to better handle stormwater runoff in the wake of repeated wastewater overflows.
But public works officials say the money didn’t go far enough. The equipment that wasn’t touched by that bond is 30 years old, earning the plant a C or lower grade on a recent report card assessment performed by city engineers.
A drinking water pump station on Main Street, near University Place, is even worse off. Built in 1867, the station is structurally unsound, and 40 years of deferred maintenance has pushed more than a quarter of its components to the brink of imminent failure. The station serves the city’s east side, including the University of Vermont Medical Center.
With the ongoing Burlington High School rebuilding project, the city has nearly maxed out its ability to issue taxpayer-backed general obligation bonds. But a bond for water projects, which would be repaid by water bills instead of property taxes, is not affected by that debt limit.
“I don’t think this will pass the public if the numbers are this high.” Councilor Becca Brown McKnight
The consequences of not upgrading both the drinking and wastewater systems could be dire, Spencer said. Spills of untreated wastewater containing E. coli bacteria could become more common, polluting Lake Champlain and shutting down city beaches. The inevitable breakdown of drinking water pumps would leave the hospital, UVM campus and homes east of Willard Street high and dry.
A $204 million bond would go toward upgrading the wastewater system. Besides replacing aging machines, the city would build additional tanks to use if existing ones break or need maintenance, creating redundancy that the current system lacks.
A $30 million chunk of the money would purchase a filtration device to reduce the amount of phosphorus flowing into the lake. The plant already discharges very little phosphorus, a mineral that feeds toxic algae blooms that plague city beaches, but a state permit will require even lower levels by 2030. The city would face hefty fines for exceeding those standards, which were created to comply with a mandate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Another $30 million would be used to close the treatment plant on Riverside Avenue, leaving a pump station there that would be cheaper to maintain. The sewage from that plant would be rerouted to the main plant, work that the bond would pay for.
If nothing is done, the city estimates the main plant could near 80 percent capacity by 2028. That could cause state regulators to limit the number of new customers that connect to the system. The bond would allow the city to expand capacity, which could help Burlington achieve its goal of adding thousands of new housing units, including more than 1,000 in the South End alone.
“We don’t want to be an impediment to that,” Spencer said.
A $21 million drinking water bond would decommission the city’s Victorian-era pump house on Main Street and build a new one on the same lot, among other upgrades. The existing system distributes water from an on-site reservoir that was pumped from Lake Champlain and treated, using pipes that are more than 150 years old. One of the pumps was built from a World War II surplus diesel motor.
“If the pumps don’t work, it’s game over,” said Megan Moir, director of the city’s water division. “People keep asking me, ‘What can we push off?’ and it’s like, ‘Not this one.'”
If all fixes were approved, a typical single-family home that pays about $60 a month for water service would see that bill double by 2030, according to city estimates. The bill, which is based on the amount of water used, would peak at $148 a month in 2035.
Other costs for Queen City residents have also been rising in recent years, and there’s no sign of a slowdown. State legislators are forecasting another large property tax increase. And having just closed a $14 million shortfall, the city is anticipating another budget gap of up to $12 million next fiscal year, meaning voters may be asked to support a tax rate increase on the March ballot.
“The reality is we need to do some level of bonding.” Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak
Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak will also propose a separate $20 million bond that would pay for various capital projects over the next three years. And councilors are seeking a charter change that would allow the city to borrow up to $10 million without going to a public vote, an increase from its current $2 million bonding authority. Officials will present more details at a January 6 town hall meeting.
Councilors agree the water projects are long overdue. But at a meeting last month, they implored officials to find a way to scale it back.
“I need to see these numbers go down,” Councilor Becca Brown McKnight (D-Ward 6) said, “because I don’t think this will pass the public if the numbers are this high.”
“There’s really no words for the pressure people are feeling,” Councilor Melo Grant (P-Central District) added. “It’s pretty extraordinary.”
Mulvaney-Stanak — who is married to Moir — said the water bond is necessary. But she also acknowledged that the city needs to contain costs.
“We have to find a middle path forward that’s within what we can afford and, frankly, what we can’t afford to keep deferring,” she said. “The reality is that we do need some level of bonding.”
Council President Traverse wouldn’t say whether he’ll vote to add the water bond to the ballot, a decision the council must make by mid-January. But he did say he can’t support putting every monetary item to voters at once.
If the water bond is the priority, he said, “then, from my perspective, there’s going to have to be some give in some other areas.”
Moir and Spencer are making efforts to reduce costs. They already trimmed $14 million from an earlier bond proposal that would have paid to relocate a sewer pipe that burst in the Winooski River during flooding in July 2023. The city now hopes to get Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to move the pipe to dry land.
Other federal cash, including grants and congressional earmarks, could bring down the total bond amount by as much as $16 million. Financing the loan through a state fund could offer lower interest rates. And housing growth would bring in more customers to help repay the debt. Moir didn’t include any of those factors in her calculations in order to present the worst-case scenario for water rates, she said.
Moir has also proposed a way to help some residents afford the increases. While most renters don’t pay water bills directly, their rents could go up. To offset the cost, the city could opt to offer rebates to lower-income tenants on their electric bills. A council subcommittee is vetting another suggestion to charge certain residential customers lower rates than commercial water users.
“From what I understand [from] the council, that’s what they’re wanting us to do: Turn over every rock,” said Spencer, the public works director. “The unfortunate part is there aren’t easy options,” he added.
Officials have been making the rounds at Neighborhood Planning Assembly meetings and hosting tours at the wastewater plant to drum up support for a bond. During Seven Days‘ recent visit, facilities manager Matt Dow said the upgrades would make things easier for his staff.
“Everybody here wants to do the best job that we can,” he said. “When you’re dealing with things that are broken or that you’ve been patching together for a decade already, there’s only so much you can do.”
Shortly after, one of Dow’s employees burst through the plant door and headed to an outbuilding. Something needed fixing.
The original print version of this article was headlined “‘Borrowed Time’ | Burlington’s water systems are failing — and the fixes could cost $225 million”
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This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2024.
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