Clarendon seeking ways to pay for wastewater line
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By STEPHANIE M. PETERS STAFF WRITER - Published: April 2, 2009
Clarendon officials were urged this week to begin researching means to pay for extending a Rutland City wastewater plant line, the first progress made in nearly six months on Clarendon's request for service.
Meanwhile, Intermunicipal Committee Chairwoman Sharon Davis said the city's engineers would get more exact information about what impact the village's need, placed by one estimate at 70,000 gallons a day, would have on the plant's existing commitments.
Davis said the aldermen's Charter and Ordinance Committee will also soon look to revise the city ordinance that governs the wastewater plant's allowed usage – the first step in making a connection to Clarendon possible because the town is not currently included in the "design service area" that dictates geographically where connections are allowed.
Officials from Rutland Town, through which the potential connection would pass, attended Tuesday's meeting and said they would be on board with the plan pending conversations between attorneys and engineers.
Absent was Rutland City Mayor Christopher Louras, who last fall was vocal in opposition to providing any connection to Clarendon that wasn't explicitly limited in the ordinance as being solely for residential, municipal and industrial use. He said he feared Clarendon would pursue the other potential use — commercial development — along Route 7.
Failing support for his suggested change of the ordinance, Louras said in October he would not allow City Engineer Alan Shelvey to devote time that could be used on city business investigating an illegal connection. The aldermen subsequently voted to continue the investigation and to give meeting notes stating that request to Shelvey as a written directive.
When the aldermen were first approached in September by Michael Klopchin, Clarendon's Select Board chairman, he explained that residents of the village of North Clarendon, as well as the area's school, have been plagued by septic systems with failing leach fields. On Tuesday, Klopchin said the problem not only persists, but is heading toward Rutland Town's town line.
"Residents have been asking for a while when we were going to do something to fix this, and now that questioning is running over," Klopchin said.
Klopchin said an alternative that was explored, but is now more unlikely, was for Clarendon and part of Rutland Town to site their own wastewater treatment plant. In addition to being extremely costly, Klopchin said, the Agency of Natural Resources pushed for him to broker an agreement with Rutland City and Rutland Town instead.
Davis said she will ask an ANR official to attend a future meeting to discuss the possibility of obtaining a state loan or grant to help fund the project and reiterated that she believes the board support for a connection is there, and it is now more a matter of working out the logistics.
"I think we have a town in need and we have an ability to help," she said, although acknowledging a concern raised by Alderman Tom DePoy that, should the Legislature again try to reduce phosphorous output into Lake Champlain, the city could be hurting itself by selling more of its capacity.
"I think those are hurdles that can be jumped," she said.
On that topic, Shelvey questioned whether the city might try to negotiate with the state about freezing the plant's levels of phosphorous output since the town and city would be helping the state avoid an environmental hazard in Clarendon's failing septic systems.
A follow-up meeting was tentatively set for the end of April.
stephanie.peters@rutlandherald.com
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