Vergennes to decide on $25.5 million sewer fix

Vergennes officials are asking voters on March 1 to support spending up to $25.5 million for a complete overhaul of the city’s failing and aging sewer collection system and treatment plant.

If city officials’ and consultants’ optimism about grant support is rewarded, most Vergennes sewer users would see an annual increase over the next few years from $500 to $850 to fund bond payments, according to official estimates.

The minimum bond needed to solve some of the most pressing problems of the Vergennes sewer collection and treatment system might trigger payments that could triple the city’s user rates, the city council heard — not happily — at its Nov. 23 meeting.

Engineers last week put on the table Step 1 in Vergennes’s effort to keep dirty sewerage from overflowing into Otter Creek.

Users of the Vergennes sewer and wastewater collection system might have to support a bond between roughly $14 million and $20 million to pay for the badly needed overhaul.

Vergennes will receive up to $3 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to support the planned rebuild of its wastewater collection system and upgrade to its sewer treatment plant.

The Vergennes City Council on Oct. 12 cited a sewer-extension policy that dates back to the 1990s in saying no to a request from development firm for a line into Ferrisburgh east of the city.

It looks like city property owners will have to do more than pay for a bond to help fund what might be a $25 million upgrade to the aging Vergennes sewer treatment plant and a collection system.

At the Vergennes city council’s Sept. 28 discussion of the system’s needs and how to pay for what the engineers and treatment plant operator Rick Chaput said is a badly needed upgrade, another voice sounded optimistic on finances.

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VERGENNES — Vergennes sewer ratepayers might in November be asked to support a multi-million-dollar bond to fund an upgrade of the city’s wastewater collection system and sewer treatment plant that could not only benefit the environment but possibly provi … (read more)