Water Sector News
A snapshot of clean water stories from publications around the country, updated daily!
As Casella aims to treat PFAS in leachate, what happens next with Vermont’s forever chemicals?
James Ehlers can’t help but say something any time he passes the Winooski River’s Salmon Hole and sees kids splashing around or anglers eyeing fish.
“Do you know what’s in that river?” Ehlers, a steadfast water activist who founded the nonprofit Lake Champlain International, sometimes yells to those he sees.
Forty miles upstream, on a daily basis, two tanker trucks that together contain 10,000 gallons of garbage juice from Vermont’s only landfill arrive at Montpelier’s wastewater treatment plant. There, workers empty the tankers into a system designed to filter as many contaminants as possible. Some substances are removed from the liquids, or leachate, but one group of harmful chemicals is not.
Instead they’re discharged into the Winooski River, flowing by the famed fishing spot before spewing out into Lake Champlain.