Rutland's wastewater treatment plant overflowed during heavy rainstorms earlier this week, dumping more than 500,000 gallons of untreated sewage into Otter Creek.Sewage overflows are not new. They are a problem around the state and happen when wastewater treatment plants are overwhelmed by stormwater runoff.
Jeff Wennberg, Rutland's commissioner of public works, said there is no silver bullet to solving the overflow problem. Instead, the city is pursuing improvements in infrastructure and in data collection.
"We're going to need some green infrastructure, we're going to need as much data infrastructure as makes sense," Wennberg said. "And we're going to need probably tens of millions of dollars of grey infrastructure, which is great big concrete tanks and treatment systems and so forth."
Rutland has reported several overflows this summer, as has Burlington. But Wennberg said that, in the grand scheme of things, wastewater treatment has greatly improved in the decades since the Clean Water Act came into effect.
"The overflows are sort of like that last, most difficult part of the problem to resolve," Wennberg said.
Wennberg said these issues will likely take decades to solve completely.
