off the wire
A Project that Holds Water
Twenty years in the making, Sugarbush’s longest-running environmental effort – to get four streams at the mountain off the EPA’s impaired list – sees its latest return in Rice Brook. By Jackie Leavitt
and VhB had to get down to the nitty-gritty – sampling aquatic ecology, monitoring sediment, assessing habitat, measuring water chemistry, even evaluating the pebble count – before developing a system for cleaning the water. Their first solution was to regrade the gravel roads and parking lots and install state-of-the-art storm-water infrastructure, so that the water from rain and melting snow now flows into pipes or open vegetated channels. This ensures that the sand and gravel in the water won’t trickle into the streams; rather, the pipes and channels lead the pollutants to one of seven “settling basins” at the mountain’s base – essentially man-made ponds or wetland areas that act as giant Brita filters, engineered to slowly release the water back into the brooks once all the pollutants have settled to the bottom. The final step is constant surveillance, with winter and summer monitoring programs to provide an evaluation of both short- and long-term fluctuations in the aquatic biodiversity. although the program tends to be one of the more costly projects for the mountain (even after all four are delisted, Sugarbush will continue to employ VhB to monitor the streams), “It’s not an economical choice,” says Wade, “but it’s the one we’ve chosen because it’s the right thing for the environment.” :
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Magazine
Go FiGure breaking down the numbers associated with Sugarbush’s green efforts.
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1
Fraction of Sugarbush’s annual waste material that is diverted from traditional disposal – such as landfills or incineration – to be recycled, composted, or reused.
23
Tons in carbon dioxide emissions that the mountain reduces annually as a result of switching all off-road diesel machinery to biodiesel fuel in 2005.
5.6
Tons of food scraps that were composted at Sugarbush during the 2010–11 ski season.
100
Percent of post-consumer recycled content that makes up all 8.5- by 11-inch office paper. sandy macys
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or Sugarbush, bugs are a big deal – especially when they’re living in the four primary brooks on the mountain. But they don’t have a negative connotation like a termite infestation in your home. here, a larger amount of bugs translates to healthier water, the kind that is able to support a diversity of life, like brook trout and other native fish species. Some 20 years ago, as a result of storm-water runoff carrying gravel and salt from roads and parking areas into the water, all four of the mountain streams were drastically short on aquatic insects like mayflies and stoneflies, causing them to rank on the environmental Protection agency’s (ePa) impaired waters list, below the state’s standards. That’s when the mountain got involved, partnering with environmental sciences consulting firm Vanasse hangen Brustlin (VhB) in 1996 to begin a long-term effort to clean up the streams. The mountain was first rewarded in the late ’90s when both Slide and Chase brooks came off the impaired list, leaving Lincoln Peak’s rice and Clay brooks still to be dealt with. Then, in late June of 2011, the ePa officially delisted rice Brook – a major landmark, says Sugarbush’s Director of Planning and regulatory Compliance margo Wade. While you may think assessing water quality is as simple as “the clearer, the better,” Sugarbush