What does it mean for the town?

By Maeve Fairfax, for the Community News Service

JERICHO – Town leaders are considering building a public wastewater system — thus opening the door to more housing development.

They’re putting together the early stages of a plan to build a public septic system in the Riverside town center. The town commissioned a feasibility study that came out in January, and a wastewater task force has been assembled since, including the town planner, members of the selectboard and planning commission and residents with related backgrounds.

Jericho leaders have explored the viability of municipal wastewater before, but it’s never come to fruition. Susan Bresee, chair of the planning commission, says that now, some critical factors seem to have aligned. 

Only half of Vermonters live in a home connected to a public wastewater system, said Liz Royer, executive director of the Vermont Rural Water Association. The remaining half of households are on private septic systems. Vermont has the highest percentage of homes reliant on private septic of any state in the country. 

Lack of public wastewater infrastructure is a major impediment to addressing housing shortages in Vermont. 

Housing costs are high statewide. 

“Because we don’t have enough supply and there’s a high demand, that drives up the price whether you’re buying or renting,” said Charlie Baker, the executive director of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. 

Jericho’s available housing stock is limited. As of 2023, only 1% of homes were vacant. And its population is aging — the median age is nearly ten years above that of Chittenden County. 

“We’re old, we’re wealthy, we don’t have many children, and it’s really pretty much impossible for…young people with children to move to Jericho unless they’ve got some family money or have an extraordinarily high income,” said Chuck Lacy of the Jericho Affordable Housing Committee. 

Chittenden County is the most populated county in the state and includes several towns with wastewater treatment plants. Baker said the existing plants provide enough capacity to support the development needed to reach the lower end of current state-issued housing targets.

But Jericho, like many towns throughout Vermont, does not have a municipally owned public wastewater system. They do have several areas served by community septic systems, but these are owned and managed by Homeowners Associations, Bresee said. 

Wastewater infrastructure greatly impacts the amount of and type of housing that can be built. 

Vermont needs to build roughly 30,000 units of housing by the end of a decade to meet demand. To do so, the state wants to focus on developing neighborhoods — both expanding ones that already exist and creating new ones, said Chris Campany, executive director of the Windham County Regional Planning Commission.

Public wastewater systems are a prerequisite to this kind of development, because building homes with private septic systems isn’t conducive to maintaining compact settlement.

Starting with Act 250 in 1970, Vermont has encouraged compact settlement patterns: development in and around existing or planned out village centers surrounded by rural countryside. The intent was to prevent sprawl that would eradicate the settlement patterns that define Vermont, said Campany.  

Private septic systems need room for a septic tank and leach field, which is where the wastewater ends up. They also need to be a safe distance from wells to prevent contamination. The minimum amount of space needed for a home with private septic in Vermont is two acres, said Campany. 

“If you start talking about 30,000 homes on two-acre lots spread all over the state, that’s gonna consume a lot of land,” he said. 

Lack of public wastewater also makes it difficult for existing village centers to evolve. Expanding or opening new businesses, particularly water intensive ones like restaurants, often requires additional capacity that private septic systems can’t support, said Campany. 

And once private systems are in the ground, their monitoring and maintenance — and often eventual replacement — fall on individual landowners.

“No one comes in and says, ‘Let me evaluate your septic system’… You take care of it on your own,” said Peter Booth, resident of Riverside and member of the Jericho Selectboard. “And when it fails, suddenly your toilet doesn’t work,” he said. 

His septic system failed ten years ago, and replacing it was a major undertaking. He had to take out a loan and get a variance from the town to build the new one close to his property line. 

Solutions to wastewater capacity issues need to be highly localized, as each town has its own set of needs and barriers. Towns with no existing infrastructure will often opt to build a decentralized septic system, which Royer said is just a large septic system that connects to many houses.

This is what Jericho is contemplating for Riverside.

Of Jericho’s three town centers, “Riverside has the most development potential. It’s a great location and it also has a decent amount of vacant land,” said Bresee. And suitable locations for a leach field have already been identified, Booth said.  

Though some funding is available for towns to build wastewater infrastructure, cost is still a major barrier. Building the system in Riverside would have cost around $20 million, which was a nonstarter, Booth said.

However, Jericho hopes to keep funding manageable by building the system out incrementally. After the first section is done, revenue generated by housing or commercial development built on the system can be used to build the next piece of the system, Booth said. 

The task force had its first meeting Aug. 6. Their job is to help the selectboard figure out the details of this project, and “eventually bring a really well documented package to the voters to approve a bond,” Bresee said.

This is no small feat.

“It’s a huge mountain to climb…and there’s so much information available and so much support available. It’s almost overwhelming,” Bresee said. 

The Village Wastewater Initiative Committee provides many such resources, including a workbook for town leaders taking on wastewater projects. 

The next step for Jericho, according to the task force, is to commission another study called a Preliminary Engineering Report, which will provide early plans for a system design. The taskforce will also need to do public outreach about the project. Bresee said the current hope is to be ready for a town vote in March 2026. 

A major question that remains is, does Jericho want this? 

Public wastewater systems open the door to denser development, “triggering the pro and anti-change conversation,” Campany said. 

He said reliance on on-site septic and well water signifies that a place “is frozen in amber, ain’t nothing gonna happen here again, it is what it is, nothing’s gonna change.” 

In contrast, proposals for public wastewater can bring up a whole host of fears about the future. 

Some Vermont towns, like Westford, have decided they don’t want public wastewater. Jericho’s study found that only 9% of residents are against building a municipal wastewater system, but the final answer will have to wait for the town to vote.

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship