Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
BARTON — All the dirty water from Barton Village, swarming with sediments, silts, nutrients, pathogens, oil, and runoff, currently drains directly into the Willoughby Brook and the Barton River. To treat these waters and ensure cleaner waterways, Memphremagog Watershed Association, an organization dedicated to preserving the environment in the Memphremagog Watershed, has designed a new stormwater treatment plan.
Water from storms will be drained into an ecological stormwater treatment area where sediments will be filtered out of the water. The new project will help to reduce pollution in waterways year-round and provide an extra protective buffer in the case of floods which often carry large quantities of dirty water into waterways.
“The first flush is the most concentrated pollution load and over time dripping oil in grease from cars, road grit, and leaf litter are all built up,” said Patrick Hurley, the Project Manager at Memphremagog Watershed Association. “This system is specifically created to treat that buildup.”
Located at the start of Church and School Street in Barton, the project will go under a town-owned gravel parking lot and into a public park, also home to the Barton Giving Community Garden. Here, the team is treating a patch of the invasive species knotweed situated near the project so that this invasive species is not spread through the water.
The design were funded by Watersheds United Vermont, an organization dedicated to preserving Vermont waterways.
“It’s important to slow down our water during rain events, preventing all that water from reaching our streams at once, which reduces flood risk downstream,” said Lyn Munno, director of Watersheds United Vermont.
Stormwater treatment plans can act as a good way to slow down water flow in more populated areas, said Munno. The plan will help with both lowering the quantity of water hitting streams at once, and will slow down the amount of sediment moving into waterways.
A diversion pipe will redirect the water from going directly into the river and Willoughby Brook bringing the water to a hydrodynamic separator, a device that uses the force of gravity to separate the water from pollutants and sediments. The water then moves to a flatter area called a level spreader infiltration trench, where the concentrated flow will be forced to slow down, minimizing erosion in the area.
Once the flow is slowed, the water will be able to dissipate into the ground of a naturally vegetated area near the Barton River. The soil and flood plain area will provide additional treatment allowing the water to naturally dissolve into the land at a slowed pace.
The entirety of the project will be underground except for the level spreader, a gravel sloped trench. The water will move down the trench to a vegetated buffer treatment area.
“It takes a lot of time and dedication to work with everyone involved in getting this project designed and implemented. It takes patience to work and coordinate with a lot of different entities,” Munno said. “I just want to give a shoutout and some praise to the people doing this work.”