Stowe Cider to make wastewater improvements with federal grant

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the Stowe Reporter on August 15.

Funds from the American Rescue Plan Act will cover improvements to Stowe Cider’s wastewater system and alleviate some of the pressure the alcohol producer puts on the town’s municipal infrastructure.

The Stowe Selectboard agreed to have the town act as a pass-through for federal funding, awarded as a grant through the Department of Environmental Conservation, for the roughly $408,000 that will help overhaul the cidery’s on-site wastewater treatment system.

The money was part of a $3.3 million released by the state to help producers of alcohol, maple syrup and cheese build or improve pre-treatment systems that will help those businesses send cleaner wastewater into town systems.

Along with Stowe cider, these businesses include Burlington Beer Company, WhistlePig Whiskey and Freak Folk Bier as well as syrup producer Runamok Maple, kombucha producer Ellipsis and Cabot Creamery owner AgriMark.

Mark Ray, a Stowe Cider owner, expressed his appreciation to the town for helping the company implement the funding, remarking that it currently tries to collect some organic waste to dispose of in a biodigester, but the system hasn’t been effective as he’d like it to be, with the surcharge cost the company has had to pay for putting a strain on the town’s wastewater system only increasing as the company grows.

“It was really nice to see that (public works director) Harry (Shepard) went to bat for us and put in the time and effort to figure out a way to make this happen that worked for them and also got us to the end goal, so I’m feeling very appreciative of that and excited at this opportunity,” Ray said.

The federal funding will allow the cidery to reduce its organic waste even more by storing it in a series of holding tanks with filtering membranes that release a cleaner effluent. The only hurdle now is for the cidery to handle the copious amounts of paperwork that come with the funding and try to keep it on budget.

Shepard noted that, while Stowe Cider had been paying a surcharge for their lower-quality waste discharge, it had not yet put so much pressure on the system that it were required to install a pre-treatment system, but Ray and company smartly took the opportunity to get funding for one before they reached that crossroad.

“These are pretty expensive systems, from a capital standpoint and operating standpoint, to both implement and then run,” Shepard said. “We wanted to help them get there as much as possible.”

The project puts Stowe Cider closer in line with The Alchemist brewery, which was built in Stowe with “wastewater in mind” — namely, a state-of-the-art wastewater system that reduces environmental impact and the weight on the municipal sewer system.

The recent inundating rains that have damaged roads and homes throughout Stowe this summer have put a great deal of pressure on the wastewater system. Though it still has plenty of capacity in a town where development continues apace amid inflated property values, this summer’s rains have emphasized the vulnerabilities of the 45-year-old lower village pump station, the last remaining element of the original sewer system.

“During periods of higher stream flows, like what we’re dealing with right now, when we’re having these kinds of rainfall events, that’s kind of the weak link in our wastewater system,” Shepard said. “We have not had any outbreak of the sewer over the last few storms like many other Vermont municipalities are dealing with, but we have situations where both pumps are running 24/7 in order to keep up with the load, and that’s not a normal thing. We don’t want to be in a situation where you’ve got both pumps running.”

A preliminary engineering study is already underway, with hopes that the pump station holds up as the town looks to replace it within the next few years.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Stowe Cider to make wastewater improvements with federal grant .