RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) - Another massive dump of wastewater due to heavy rains was reported in Vermont.
Nearly 9.7 million gallons of storm runoff and a half million gallons of sewage flowed into the Otter Creek on Monday.
The spill was not reported to the public until Wednesday because the state’s notification website was down.
The rain overwhelmed the city’s sewage plant, which led to the spill, said Jeff Wennberg, city commissioner of public works.
“This resulted in the system overflowing which it’s designed to do to prevent backups from getting into buildings and bubbling up on streets,” he told WCAX-TV. “Because it rained so much, the amount was unusually large.”
The combination of heavy rain and aging pipes leads to about 20 overflows a year, Wennberg said.
In fact, another discharge of 70,000 gallons, including 3,500 gallons of untreated sewage, occurred in the city Wednesday afternoon at an overflow location about a mile from the wastewater plant.
The city is working on fixing the issue, but it’s estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars. One of the solutions is to build a large holding tank to collect sewage and stormwater.
Several large discharges have been reported into Lake Champlain this summer. The release of 3 million gallons of partially treated sewage into the lake has been blamed on a computer malfunction at the city’s main wastewater treatment plant during heavy storms.
The city released 1.8 million gallons of partially treated wastewater into the lake in June, forcing the closure of city beaches. State officials said part of the problem was wastewater from breweries and food producers that upset the biological balance of the treatment plant.
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