Brook safe for swimming after sewage discharge fix

After four years of water sampling and with the help of a Vermont Watershed Program grant, bacteria levels in the Valley Street Brook in central Springfield have finally reached a safe swimming level.

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2016-06-07 / Front Page Brook safe for swimming after sewage discharge fix By Tory Jones Bonenfant toryb@eagletimes.com Lucy Georgeff and her daughter Eva sample water at the lower end of Valley Street Brook in this 2014 photo. They helped with the testing on May 25, 2016 that resulted in safe swimming levels after four years of cleanup efforts. — COURTESY Lucy Georgeff and her daughter Eva sample water at the lower end of Valley Street Brook in this 2014 photo. They helped with the testing on May 25, 2016 that resulted in safe swimming levels after four years of cleanup efforts. — COURTESY SPRINGFIELD — After four years of water sampling and with the help of a Vermont Watershed Program grant, bacteria levels in the Valley Street Brook in central Springfield have finally reached a safe swimming level. “Valley Street Brook has been the unfortunate recipient of direct sewage discharges from three buildings for far too long,” said Kelly Stettner, who organizes the Black River Action Team (BRAT) in Springfield. While she did not want to pinpoint exactly which buildings those are, they are all centrally located downtown, she said. “In 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, the bacteria levels were extremely high — often off the chart,” Stettner said in a BRAT newsletter issued last week. Stettner said the EPA lists a "safe swimming" level of 235 cfu ( 235 colony-forming units of coliform bacteria per 100 mL of water). “Valley Street Brook was typically reading well over 2,000 cfu,” she said. On May 25, when the program took its first samples since the connection of those buildings to the main sewer lines in the town of Springfield, “that number dropped to fewer than 100 cfu,” she said. The town of Springfield obtained a VT Watershed Grant for $3,500, awarded in April of 2016 for water quality monitoring in both the Black River and Ottauquechee River watersheds, according to Stettner. Ottauquechee Natural Resources Conservation District, which acts as a fiscal agent for the not-for-profit BRAT, applied for funding on the group’s behalf and for another nearby watershed group, the Ottauquechee River Group. The application was to fund the cost of shipping the samples to the various labs, and for some volunteer mileage to and from sites every month. Bacteria samples are shipped to Endyne Labs, in Lebanon, for testing. The tests usually cost of $25 per sample, but the company has been donating sample testing services for 14 sites per summer, Stettner said. Each BRAT River Dipper collects three additional bottles to test for total nitrates, total phosphates, and turbidity, Stettner said. Those chemical samples are sent via Green Mountain Messenger to the LaRosa State Water Quality Lab, currently housed at University of Vermont in Burlington. The tests are done for free as part of the State of Vermont's LaRosa Partnership Program, and part of the Vermont Watershed Grant covers the courier, a cost of about $15 a month, she said. BRAT also records the pH of each sample site and the water temperature. Stettner said on Monday, June 6 that she started thinking about cleaning up the brook in 2010, and has been actively doing that since 2012. She has been organizing a “RiverSweep” to clean trash from the Black River for more than 15 years. “Somebody had to clean the junk out of the Black River,” Stettner said. Her husband encouraged her, saying that since she loved the river so much, perhaps she could be the one to help do that. “I have loved the river my entire life. I grew up in the foothills of the White River,” she said. In BRAT’s River Dipper program, trained volunteers collect samples of water from the Black River and selected tributaries, including Valley Street Brook (formerly known as Mile Brook). Stettner said that Valley Street Brook is a “rarely-seen brook” that runs through downtown Springfield. BRAT’s annual River Dipper program has had a focus on the Valley Street Brook since 2012. The program includes volunteers of all ages: retired people, youth, and community members, including local resident Lucy Georgeff and her daughter Eva, and Stettner’s teen daughter. “We have to follow [the state’s] protocols and training,” she said. BRAT is headquartered at 101 Perley Gordon Road in Springfield, in a laboratory in the basement of Stettner’s home. Stettner said Valley Street Brook was brought to her attention a few years ago by a citizen who lives at the mouth of the brook, where it empties into the Black River in downtown Springfield. The smells and "visuals" were captured in emails and photographs, she said. When she brought it to the town manager's attention, she was informed that a grant had been applied for to have an Illegal Discharge Detection and Elimination (IDDE) done in Springfield, she said. “A contractor came through town, exploring every culvert and flow-site in town — pipes, bank seeps, you name it — and recorded all kinds of data, including the presence of metals, fuel, bacteria, and much more,” she said. Valley Street Brook had “some pretty high metal readings,” so Stettner met with a state employee to try laying down passive diffusion bags on the bed of the brook, underneath Main Street. They also discussed the best way to collect water samples to learn about bacteria levels, and began sampling in 2012. Those numbers were “off the charts” most of the time, yet just below the Comtu Falls cascade, the bacteria levels were very low, and safe for contact, she said. “That was a relief!” she said. Once the IDDE was complete, the source of the bacteria was determined to be those three buildings on Valley Street that had not been connected to the main sewer lines. The sewer line was cutting across the brook and through the parking lot of a nearby bank, and the town had no other way to tie the three discharge lines in without extending the sewer down Valley Street. The selectboard unanimously agreed in 2014 to apply for state revolving loan funding in connection with an approximate $800,000 wastewater project, according to the minutes from a February 2014 Springfield Selectboard meeting. That project was to include the three properties on Valley Street with sewer discharge going directly into the brook. “Valley Street had to be torn up so those buildings could be connected, and we're seeing the stream's bacteria levels drop to well below safe,” Stettner said. The River Dipper program now tests at 14 sites monthly. It also samples two swimming holes, Greven Field in Proctorsville and Buttermilk Falls in Ludlow, every week for bacteria levels. Buttermilk Falls is adopted by Okemo Mountain Resort, which sponsors the testing of the falls and post BRAT’s weekly chart on a board at the entrance to the swimming area. For more information on the organization’s programs, visit http://www.BlackRiverActionTeam.org.