Phil Dodd
MONTPELIER — During the July 2023 flood, when downtown Montpelier was inundated and the Montpelier High School basement was filling with water, the city’s valuable and regionally important wastewater treatment plant also came within inches of flooding. It was primarily protected by the adjacent Dog River Road, which acted as a levee.
If the plant had been destroyed by the flood, untreated wastewater would likely have flowed into the Winooski River for several weeks. Also, a complicated and expensive multi-year reconstruction might have been needed, as happened in Johnson after the same flood decimated its wastewater plant.
Montpelier officials have been seeking flood protection solutions, but progress has been slow. Earlier this year, the state rejected a $3.5 million flood grant application from Montpelier to raise the Dog River Road to better protect the plant from future floods.
The state did grant the city $156,000 to study ways to prevent flooding of the wastewater plant, but the city has not yet hired a consultant for the study. City officials say it could take a few years to study, fund, and implement a plan to protect the wastewater plant from large floods.
Wastewater plants in Vermont were built near rivers for a reason, according to Liz Royer, executive director of the Vermont Rural Water Association. “We put the wastewater plants in the lowest lying part of the town because then gravity can bring all the wastewater to the plant and we don’t have to pay for it to get it pumped there,” she said.
That’s a two-edged sword, though. Several Vermont wastewater plants were damaged during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, again during floods in both July and August of 2023, and again in July of 2024.
“There’s been quite a few events and they seem to be happening more frequently in recent years,” she said.
City Plant a Regional Resource
Montpelier’s wastewater plant, located near the confluence of the Dog and Winooski rivers, processes about 2 million gallons of wastewater and stormwater every day from Montpelier and part of Berlin. It is designed to handle up to 3.9 million gallons a day, according to statistics provided by Kurt Motyka, director of the Montpelier Public Works Department.
The plant also accepts 8.2 million gallons a year in materials pumped from about 8,230 septic tanks across the state, Motyka said. In fact, roughly 30% of the septage pumped from Vermont septic tanks is trucked to Montpelier.
In addition, in 2025 the plant accepted 2 million gallons of leachate from the state’s only active landfill, 2.5 million gallons of municipal sludge from other wastewater facilities, and 1.7 million gallons of high-strength organic waste, such as from breweries or daires. In payment for handling all that material, Montpelier received $1.4 million in fiscal year 2025 alone, according to Motyka.
The 2023 floodwater came “basically up to the edge of the [Dog River] road, very close to it, within a few inches, is my understanding,” Motyka said. Also, a stormwater outfall to the river was backing up and coming into the plant, he said. The flow was so high that the plant’s bacterial biological treatments were washed out and the city had to have bacteria trucked in.
The city hired an engineering firm that recommended plumbing changes inside the plant and raising the road to create a bigger berm, but an early plan to get funding from the federal government fell apart when the Trump administration tried to kill FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program in April 2025. The courts have since forced the administration to backtrack, but the funds have been cut.
Meanwhile, a disaster aid law passed by Congress in December 2024 eventually led to Vermont receiving $68 million in federal flood recovery funds, which were then awarded to in-state applicants. Montpelier applied for a $3.5 million grant to elevate Dog River Road by three feet to protect the wastewater plant from future floods (which could submerge the plant in 11 feet of water), but the state decided it was not a viable plan.
The wastewater plant project had been a high priority for City Planning Director Mike Miller, and the lack of funding came as a disappointment, he said, noting the plant is worth about $80 million.
“The state was very supportive of our grants throughout the application process, especially the sewage treatment plant, because in 2023 three treatment plants were flooded — Ludlow, Johnson, and Hardwick — and those plants cost $68 million to repair,” Miller told The Bridge.
Motyka said the state had concerns about the impacts of raising the road on downstream properties.
“Instead of funding construction, they asked us to look at other alternatives to using the road as a levee,” he said. Montpelier is using its $156,000 planning grant to hire an engineering firm for that purpose.
Motyka expects the study to include seeing what can be done to prevent floodwaters from coming up the pipes that carry treated water to the river. There may also be a chance to remap the floodway limits, which the city thinks may not be accurately mapped, he said. Installing a bypass to prevent stormwater from coming into the plant during a flood is another idea, Miller said. He said it is also possible the city will try to convince the state to reconsider its conclusion that the Dog River Road should not be raised and used as a levee.
“We would like the opportunity to push back on that,” Miller said. “We are going to start out working with ANR [the Agency of Natural Resources] to make sure we can come up with solutions that they’re going to be comfortable with and to have a little bit of a debate on whether or not roads could be used as levees, because you can put a road on a dam. I can take you up to Wrightsville and we can drive across Wrightsville Dam.”
Timeline for Changes
According to Motyka, the city could have an engineer under contract within two months, and the study might take another six months, which he said could conceivably be complete next summer. But, he added, “Next summer is probably optimistic, particularly with our current workload.”
Miller said it likely will take longer; after the planning study the city will need to find funds for construction or another solution.
“At best it would be 2028 that we would start, but that would be really aggressive,” Miller said. “Chances are good that 2028 would be spent with a lot of work getting funding lined up,” he said. Actual construction might not occur until 2029 or 2030, he added.
To fund the project, Miller said the state could look again at the federal BRIC program or possibly state funds.
“I think once we see what the solution is, that will probably help steer us towards what grant would be the most appropriate for trying to get it built,” he said. Miller said the city might have to bond for some or all of the work if grants don’t cover the entire cost.
State and federal programs that could help include FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance Program and Vermont’s Community Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Program, according to Stephanie Brackin, ANR’s communication director.
The wastewater plant is critical not just for Montpelier but for the entire region, Miller noted. “We want to be as quick as possible. It hasn’t flooded in Irene, it hasn’t flooded in 2023, but the costs of having that overtopped are tremendous from an environmental standpoint and a financial standpoint,” he said. “So we really would like to not let this drag on for 10 years.”
Johnson’s 2023 Flood
The village of Johnson operates a smaller wastewater plant that processes roughly 250,000 gallons a day. In July 2023, the plant flooded and suffered the worst damage of any wastewater plant in the state, according to Village Manager Erik Bailey.
“It put everything operational in that facility underwater — all the mechanical stuff, all the electronic stuff, the computers, the wiring,” he said.
With help from other wastewater plant operators in Vermont, the state wastewater program, and the hard work of its crew, the Johnson plant was up and running in 30 days, Bailey said. Three years later, “we’re still running on what I call bailing wire and duct tape,” he added.
Johnson now has plans to elevate the existing plant to three feet or more above the 2023 flood level, a project that Bailey said could take three to four years and cost up to $17 million.
Emergency repairs to get Johnson’s plant back to a temporary operating condition cost about $3 million, he said. Johnson hopes to be reimbursed for most of that money from FEMA and a state match. Bailey said Johnson will try to fund the reconstruction through FEMA and the state as well.
