Colchester is breaking ground this month on one of the biggest public infrastructure projects ever undertaken in inner Malletts Bay: an $18.8 million sewer project that has been talked about for more than 60 years.
The “pollution abatement project” is being undertaken “to address failing septic systems and human waste bacteria in Malletts Bay,” Town Manager Aaron Frank said in an email this week.
But officials have been unable to quell the concerns of some residents who have long objected to the proposal. Opponents fear a new sewer line could spur dense and detrimental development in Malletts Bay — all while failing, they argue, to protect water quality.
At the heart of the dispute is the bay, a serene, scenic natural harbor that provides spectacular views, wildlife habitat and year-round recreational opportunities from boating to fishing.
Longtime resident and former selectboard member Marilyn Sowles, who first opposed the sewer project in 1999, continues to do so because, she said, she loves the bay and wants to see it protected.
“When you’re putting a sewer around a beautiful lakeshore like that in Colchester, it’s about development,” she recalled being told by her father-in-law, John Sowles, who was a selectboard member in the 1960s when the sewer project first came up.
“My heart is really broken because water quality is super important. Everybody loves the lake, everybody cares about the lake,” she said. “But the direction that Colchester is going is not addressing water quality in the bay and we could have some real problems in 20 years.”
Opponents worry new development would create more impervious surfaces and increase vehicular traffic, all of which would exacerbate pollution off Lakeshore Drive, a narrow three-mile road hugging Malletts Bay, dotted with tiny camps and older homes.
They also disagree that the new sewer line is the right tool to improve water quality. As it stands now, the sewer project includes no plan for stormwater mitigation or the direct discharges — which town officials say is a separate issue and too expensive, but which detractors argue should be the priority.
With climate change and increasing levels of cyanobacteria blooms, phosphorus and other pollutants affecting water quality in the bay, some fear the town is investing in future development over critical environmental improvements.
Frank pushed back on the notion that the project will spur new development, saying the new line would not have “capacity to support development beyond what could be legally built” without it. Factors restricting development, he said, include limited roadway capacity and land use regulations on East and West Lakeshore drives.
“The Malletts Bay Sewer Project is designed to remove human waste bacteria from Malletts Bay, not stormwater,” Frank said. Stormwater issues are being addressed through a variety of other projects, he said, including the Prim/West Lakeshore Drive and Bayside intersection projects, the Shore Acres water quality improvement project and the development of a stormwater treatment facility to be sited on East Lakeshore Drive.
The line is expected to be the first along the crescent waterfront in Colchester — a rural and suburban town of about 17,200 residents that boasts 27 miles of Lake Champlain shoreline and which primarily relies on septic systems. The town has a limited 15-mile sewer system serving the commercial center around Exit 16 off Interstate 89, and the new project would add about four miles more.
Construction is expected to start in the next two weeks with significant traffic and delays expected. The town is coordinating with the school district and emergency services, according to Frank.
A 3-year project
First identified as a priority by the town in the 1960s but voted down three times, the sewer project was finally approved in March 2022 when 71% of voters approved a $11.5 million bond vote. Estimated to cost $16.7 million at the time, the project was pitched to stop pollution from failed septic systems that leak into the bay. The cost has since climbed to $18.8 million.
The project was voted down three times previously, residents pointed out, but Frank said the reason was not environmental but about how the project was to be funded.
“Prior efforts to gain approval included funding from local funding sources other than the direct users of the system. The project approved in 2022 is funded only by grants and user fees from the 289 properties to be connected to the system,” he said in an email.
The three-year project involves extending municipal sewer service to 289 residential properties and a few commercial ones with frontages around the bay on East Lakeshore Drive, a section of West Lakeshore Drive and at Goodsell Point, according to the town plan.
Wastewater from the bay will then be treated at the Airport Parkway Wastewater Treatment Facility under an existing contract with the city of South Burlington.
The town has secured $18.7 million in a combination of grants and loans, according to Frank. About 68% will be funded by grants — including $5.4 million in Covid-related American Rescue Plan Act funds that Colchester received — with the remaining portion to be funded by a 30-year, 2% loan from the state that will be paid by users of the Malletts Bay sewer.
The project will not be paid for by property taxes or local option taxes, officials have said.
Properties that hook up to the line will face a usage fee. User costs will be “generally affordable and comparable to, or less than, the costs of an on-site wastewater system,” Frank said in an email, estimating that monthly costs could be about $100.
A 2019 town presentation projected user costs to be $9.90 per $1,000 gallons of wastewater — more than 24.5% higher than the state average.
Water quality concerns
Colchester has grappled with wastewater issues in Malletts Bay since the 1960s as levels of E.coli have often exceeded state standards — a key reason that town officials say the sewer line and treatment is necessary.
Opponents, though, have argued that officials are misidentifying the underlying issues and using the wrong tools to solve the wrong problems. For example, they point to the 2017 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s findings of non-human E.coli in over 90% of the bacteria found in the water samples, attributing it to birds, pets and wild animals, with the highest readings found in streams flowing into the lake and not isolated in front of lakeshore dwellings.
James Ehlers, an environmental advocate and former Colchester resident, said the town’s reasoning does not address bacterial contamination from wildlife in the bay, nor the issue of nutrient loading and excessive phosphorus which comes from stormwater runoff.
“Choosing sewer was a clear preference to accelerate development. Acceleration of development will only make the stormwater situation worse,” said Ehlers, who is in charge of the We Love Malletts Bay website but no longer lives in town. “Not only are they not taking action to protect the bay and the health of the public, they are willfully choosing to make it worse.”
Residents point to several studies from which they draw their arguments — including the $2 million, 869-page water quality study funded by the EPA that states the bay area does not need a sewer system except to support new development.
The study pointed to 14 direct discharges responsible for diminishing water quality in the bay that that town considered mitigating then but has not addressed since.
The report states that “storm runoff, and its direct and indirect impacts on sediment and nutrient concentrations in the Town’s streams and Malletts Bay, represents a significant and perhaps the largest source of the degradation of Colchester’s water resources” and also states that most of East Lakeshore Drive East “is well suited for conventional subsurface septic systems.”
Both the report and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources identified three bacterial impaired tributaries which are flowing into the bay, so building a sewer will not solve the problem, said Jack Scully, a former selectboard member and former leader of the earlier Friends of Malletts Bay citizen group that also opposed the sewer.
“You still will have over 90% of the E.coli streaming into inner Mallets Bay,” he said. “Sewers don’t clean up streams. They just take care of household wastewater.”
Group members reviewed the Planning Commission’s 2019 sewer project plan and came up with a seven-point alternative that they say the town ignored. Updated in 2022, the 33-page report summarized years of studies and concerns and recommended a scaled down community septic system to treat wastewater, an increased funding mechanism for stormwater management, and isolating and treating the main sources of pollution in the bay.
In an emailed statement Thursday, Frank and Public Works Director Bryan Osbourne disputed the residents’ claims. They said stormwater pollution is present in any and all bodies of water and that both the EPA and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources “also identified human waste bacteria in Malletts Bay caused by antiquated and failing septic systems, and recommended the construction of the Malletts Bay Sewer Project.”
There are multiple plans underway to address the phosphorus reduction targets set by the EPA, they said. And they noted that the town considered the community septic proposal and found it would cost the town and residents much more than the sewer.
In a long letter addressing resident concerns previously, Osbourne wrote the town has invested $3.5 million worth of improvements but that addressing the stormwater improvements would cost millions more.
While town officials share the water quality concerns, the discharges in Malletts Bay are “only a part of a much larger picture,” “not a regulatory requirement,” and involve “resource constraints” of money and staffing, he added.
“As you know, addressing water quality is complicated, takes time and is quite expensive,” Osbourne wrote.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Residents worry Colchester’s $18.8M sewer project will spur development at Malletts Bay.