Hidden histories
State champs!
Artists in residence share their stories at Clemmons
Girls’ cross country wins Division I title
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November 2, 2023
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Weekly news coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg
thecitizenvt.com
Forest fungi
PHOTO BY MAURA KELLEY
Maura Kelley shot this closeup autumn study of the forest floor in Hinesburg.
Appeal advances, Hinesburg will rebid wastewater project COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
Hinesburg is proceeding with a rebid to build a new state-mandated wastewater treatment facility, as the town’s appeal of the state’s discharge permit advances. Engineers this summer went back to the drawing board to find alternatives in the facility’s engineering and to reduce overall costs in the design. Officials with Aldrich and Elliot presented the town with a new new design that has brought the estimated cost of construction of a new facility to $13 million, roughly $1.7 million less than the lowest bid the town received in April. “We’re doing our best here to try and minimize these increases to the extent possible,” Wayne
Elliot of Aldrich and Elliot said. Hinesburg since 2018 has faced a mandatory order to rebuild its wastewater treatment facility after a state discharge permit was issued that required the town to reduce the amount of phosphorus and ammonia in its wastewater discharged into the LaPlatte River. Voters in 2020 approved a borrowing capacity of $11.7 million for the new facility by a vote of 1,810 to 98. The town has already spent $2 million on site work at the Lagoon Road site. But in September, the fiveyear renewal of that permit added additional testing requirements and lower limits — conditions the town would have to test for and monitor on its own. Hinesburg is appealing that new discharge permit in Vermont
Environmental Court, arguing that the conditions imposed on the town are overly onerous, and that the new permit’s requirements were approved despite the state
not completing any field work to verify its findings. The town hopes a successful appeal could bring down the overall operating cost of the facility.
Any movement to decrease the overall cost of the project for the See WASTEWATER on page 13
Without state aid, school buildings suffer CVU fares better than most, infrastructure still failing LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
It’s been more than 15 years since the state helped fund school construction projects, and even for schools like the Champlain Valley School District that aren’t facing massive, deferred maintenance costs, staff there is wasting no time in preparing for a troubling
next 10 years. In April 2022, the education committees in both the Vermont House and Senate commissioned the independent analysis, “Vermont School Facilities Inventory and Assessment,” that reviewed a broad range of facility-related factors in 54 school districts across the state. The study utilized a Facility
Condition Index to measure the aggregated depletion percentage of facilities for each district. The higher the percentage, the greater the need for infrastructure replacement or upgrades. The average for the districts participating in the study was 71.4 percent, which See INFRASTRUCTURE on page 12