RANDOLPH, VT, October 1. Vermont’s Governor Peter Shumlin, United States Representative Peter Welch, a representative of Senator Bernie Sanders, the USDA Rural Development State Director Ted Brady, and Randolph Town Manager Mel Adams attended the ground breaking for the construction of the Town’s new wastewater treatment facility. The new facility and treatment process was designed by DuBois & King (D&K) and was funded by $9M of Federal grants and loans from USDA Rural Development. The project was recognized for its investment in the local economy, job creation, and improving the water quality of the White River.
The original facility, designed by DuBois & King, was state-of-the-art when built over 40 years ago, but “it has out lived its useful life and is beyond its design life,” said D&K’s Tom Doty, PE, Senior Process Engineer for the new facility. The new facility will retain the existing permitted 400,000 gallons per day capacity of the previous facility and will use Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) technology.
Expected to serve the Town for the next 20 years, the plant is specifically designed to remove nitrogen. “The focus of nitrogen removal is important not only for the State of Vermont, but as part of the larger Long Island Sound Initiative, which includes efforts to clean up headwaters of rivers flowing to Long Island Sound. Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts have been meeting stricter nutrient levels for a while and it has worked its way up the Connecticut River Basin, now to the state of Vermont.” Doty said. The new facility is one of the first in Vermont to comply with new state and federal requirements to reduce the amount of nitrogen discharged and is in compliance with recent nitrogen effluent limits for rivers flowing into the Connecticut River.
