Burlington residents in March will vote on two bond items that would upgrade failing water and wastewater infrastructure, but they come with a hefty price tag.
The City Council approved the two bond items last week totaling $172 million. One would fund infrastructure repairs in the city’s drinking water system, and another would renovate and consolidate the wastewater management system at the city’s main treatment plant.
If approved, the bond items could result in an 89% increase to residents’ average water bills over a five-year period, according to city documents.
But city officials say the work is necessary to ensure the both systems will be able to handle approximately 5,000 housing units that are queued up for construction in Burlington. System upgrades would also help prevent phosphorus runoff and mitigate damaging effects to Lake Champlain.
“Things get more expensive when you continue to defer maintenance, so it is part of our responsibility as stewards of our city today to make sure we start putting responsible investments back into our city,” Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak said at a recent council meeting. “This is how we will thrive, this is how we will flourish as a community.”
First floated by the city’s water resources team in November, initial estimates for the work exceeded $200 million. After elected officials voiced concerns that the price tag could be too much for city residents to stomach, officials whittled that number down by deferring some aspects of the project.
“It’s a really big bite that we’re asking people to take,” said Megan Moir, the city’s water resources director. “I’m okay with pushing things out a little bit further with the hopes that we can keep everybody engaged and plotting ahead on the right path.”
Moir and Burlington Department of Public Works Director Chapin Spencer cut $14 million from the bond proposal that would have paid for the relocation of a sewage pipe underneath the Winooski River that burst during the July 2023 flooding.
That project “is still in the FEMA queue,” said Moir, who is hopeful that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could fund the project. But she noted that “we have heard some murmurings about FEMA not being sure about its eligibility now.”
Public works officials also trimmed millions from the proposal by postponing plans to convert the city’s Riverside Avenue treatment plant into a pump station, as well as upgrades to a third plant in the city’s New North End.
But that work will have to get done eventually, and could lead to more borrowing down the road.
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“There’s nothing in the original plan that we’re not going to have to do,” Moir said. “I very much hope that when we get to stage 2, which could come as early as 2027, that that number that we have listed right now, could be smaller.”
For now, $152 million would go towards improving wastewater and stormwater operations by consolidating operations and wastewater flows at the city’s main plant near Perkins Pier, according to city documents.
The bond revenue would allow the city to replace machinery at the plant, and to build backup tanks to keep the system flowing.
The second bond, meanwhile, would invest $20 million in improvements to the city’s drinking water system.
Moir, who is married to Mulvaney-Stanak, said in an interview that the improvements are critical. Piping in both the water and wastewater system “is truly at significant risk of failure,” she said.
With housing developments like CityPlace soon to come online, city officials say the water system needs to catch up to meet this demand. Moir noted that 20% of the project can be attributed to capacity needs.
“We need to be able to be ready to plug those people in… to be part of our housing stock here, and we do not have the capacity at this moment to be able to grow to those numbers,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
A key component of the plan would be ensuring compliance with a state requirement to reduce the amount of phosphorus flowing into Lake Champlain by 2030. Moir said that $30 million would go towards a tertiary system to treat phosphorus at the plant.
Phosphorus has been shown to fuel cyanobacteria blooms, sometimes referred to as blue-green algae, in the lake, which have grown in frequency in recent years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 required the state to come up with a plan for reducing phosphorus.
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The longer the city waits, the more it risks a breakdown in the water system, Moir said.
“Regardless of whether we agree about the bond, we can agree on the need,” Moir said at a recent council meeting.
If the bonds are approved on March 4, ratepayers are expected to see a gradual increase over the next five years. City officials projected a 15.5% increase in both 2026 and 2027, and a nearly 19% increase in 2028, according to city documents.
Burlington’s City Council passed both bonds unanimously during its Jan. 27 meeting.
Moir and Chapin said during recent council meetings that state revolving loan funds and grant opportunities could bring down the total cost the city would need to borrow.
More housing units that are paying into the water system could also potentially bring down the overall cost, Moir added.
“I’ve tried to make it clear to people that I hope that that up to 89% is a conservative number,” Moir said, referring to the estimated water rate increase.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington bond items would upgrade water, wastewater infrastructure — and nearly double residents’ water rates.