Thanks to heavy damages suffered in July’s flooding, the city of Barre’s finances are completely up in the air. How much so? City Council has agreed to postpone Town Meeting Day elections until May because, per the Times Argus, “they didn’t have enough good information to comfortably adopt a budget to present to voters on the first Tuesday in March.”

Ouch. Fair to say that the last thing the city needs right now is another piece of big, bad, expensive news.

And here it is! The Barre City Wastewater Treatment Facility and its management have been found to be grossly inadequate. An agreement with the state lists 18 violations in 2020 and 2021 that depict the plant as pretty much a complete disaster. It’s officially called an “Assurance of Discontinuance,” meaning the city promises to cut it the hell out. The full agreement, signed last week by Superior Court Judge Thomas Walsh, can be downloaded here.

You might be thinking that many of Vermont’s municipal wastewater systems are trash, so what makes Barre stand out in that crowd? Well, let me tell you.

On 18 separate occasions over a 16-month period, the plant exceeded limits on effluents that can affect aquatic life and esthetic standards. Plant management failed to submit an acceptable Emergency Power Failure Plan, which would identify backup sources of power in case of an outage. It also failed to submit a required in-depth engineering evaluation and emergency response plan.

We continue. State officials ordered the plant to submit plans for compliance with effluent limits and identify funding sources for necessary improvements. It failed to do so. In July 2021, a pump station failed, sending untreated gunk into the Stevens Branch of the Winooski River. That pump station remained in a state of failure until November. The state also ordered a backup generator for the station, which has yet to be installed.

But wait, there’s more! Plant management did not maintain an adequate operating staff. A crucial piece of equipment was noted as causing excessive discharge in a 2017 inspection — and has yet to be fixed. In 2022 the plant was ordered to take steps to resolve odor complaints — and has yet to do so. On several occasions, the plant failed to properly notify the state when effluents were not treated before discharge or when critical pieces of equipment did not work properly.

The city also failed to enforce sewer ordinances defining acceptable discharges into the system, which led to the presence of large quantities of “fat, oil or grease” and “dairy wastes” in Barre’s wastewater.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…

The consequences, please: The city must pay a penalty of almost $16,000 and commit nearly $48,000 to improvement projects. Those are the only defined financial consequences, but there’s a long list of mandated improvements that will surely be a heavy burden on the city’s bottom line and its staff. The city is required to comply with discharge limits, hire enough qualified people to meet professional standards within 180 days, begin to actually enforce its sewer use ordinance, and submit plans for (a) dealing with power failures and other emergencies, (b) repairing faulty equipment, and (c) notifying the state of future unpermitted discharges.

The burden for dealing with all of this will fall on current City Manager Nicholas Storellicastro, Mayor Jake Hemmerick and members of City Council, but it must be noted that the real trouble occurred during the tenure of their predecessors, Steve Mackenzie and Lucas Herring.

It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work and a fair bit of money to live up to this “Assurance of Discontinuance,” even as the flood-recovery struggle continues. The task of city leadership is unenviable. But it’s necessary. Here’s hoping they can live up to this agreement. It’s what the people of Barre, and the rest of us downstream, deserve.