The project is part of the Vermont Green Schools Initiative, a partnership between the Lake Champlain Sea Grant, state environmental conservation department and Greenprint Partners

By Will Thorn, for the Community News Service

South Burlington School District’s middle and high schools have had to play the waiting game for their planned stormwater project, and they’ll have to stay at the table a little while longer.

On Nov. 4, regional Act 250 coordinator Stephanie Monaghan determined that developers would need a permit for the proposed stormwater treatment project on the 60-acre parcel that houses Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School and South Burlington High School. The project needs a permit under the state’s land-use law because it involves extensive earth disturbance, requires tree-cutting and would stand close to wetlands and Potash Brook, wrote Monaghan in a ruling issued that day.

The project is part of the Vermont Green Schools Initiative, a partnership between the Lake Champlain Sea Grant, state environmental conservation department and Chicago green infrastructure firm Greenprint Partners. The initiative — which covers public schools and state colleges in the Lake Champlain and Lake Memphremagog watersheds — provides schools with stormwater education and opportunities to explore additional environmental benefits of  stormwater projects. 

It also assists public schools with the financial and technical aspects of meeting requirements under the Vermont Clean Water Act. Part of the law that went into effect in 2020 requires stormwater runoff improvements for properties with 3 or more acres of impervious surfaces, like paved parking lots, that never had a stormwater permit or have an outdated one. 

Paul Boisvert, who is in charge of the project for the Greenprint-retained firm Engineering Ventures, said he and his team designed the build to slow runoff by recreating how the land would’ve dealt with excess water before buildings and other infrastructure. 

Designing for the site was challenging due to sandy soils, high seasonal high-water levels and regulatory rules related to nearby Potash Brook, Bosivert said. But the team ultimately worked toward “breaking the site up and seeing what we can use as unobtrusively and inexpensively as we can get to where we need to go,” he said. 

He doesn’t expect the plans will need to change much to meet the Act 250 permit.

Most of the planned changes are small, Bosivert said, with strips of vegetation acting as filters and other ways to divert rainwater scattered around the site. 

Structural changes are slated to take place under the property’s central parking lot. Runoff that currently flows east off the lot into a catch basin would instead be routed to a bioretention system that filters water into a chamber underground, where it can be absorbed into the soil. Another planned system would send water through vegetation and sand  into a dry pond to gradually release runoff off another lot in the southwest corner of the property. On the west side of the middle school — which will also see a piping upgrade — a shallow basin would collect runoff and let it seep into the soil.   

Engineering Ventures gave the school district an estimated cost of $785,320, said Tim Jarvis, the district’s senior director of finance and operations. 

Of that sum, the school district would have to pay $78,532, as public schools participating in the program must pay 10% of the construction costs as required under the 3-acre permit.

Schools can put that money toward the construction itself, or they can put an equivalent amount toward different programs and improvements that complement the stormwater treatment efforts. The latter would include outdoor classrooms, monitoring equipment, experiential learning sites, habitat restoration and informational resources. Schools can also do a bit of both.

Bringing in green infrastructure at schools can make the landscapes look nicer and address flooding and ponding on fields, said Laura Burke, manager of climate programs at Greenprint. 

Sixty-six schools are hoping to participate in the construction phase of the initiative. If there isn’t enough funding for each school, school leaders can get extra prioritization by opting to fund add-ons to their infrastructure projects, Burke said.

“We’ve been encouraging everyone to think through that and to come to us if they have any ideas they want to do,” she said. 

If South Burlington chose to go the cash route, the district could use bond money approved by voters in March 2023 to cover that cost, said Jarvis, the district finance official. Any extra-benefit projects would have to come from the schools’ annual budget, as they “would not represent direct payment of expenditures for the underlying stormwater capital project,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis said school leaders hope the property will be selected for construction in 2025. The district has not looked into any projects to fund alongside the stormwater systems yet, he said, but it plans to.

“We intend to invest some of our local funds in activities and curriculum,” he said. “The programming aspect, or the student activity aspect, would have additional inherent value.” 

Thirty-four schools were selected for this year’s construction phase of the initiative. Only seven of those schools made at least significant progress, Burke said. Greenprint suspects that after permitting delays, many of the firms able to do the work had already filled their calendars, she said. 

Now, Greenprint’s goal is to get the remainder of the previously selected projects out to bid for the 2025 construction season. Thirteen of those were recently put out to bid, Burke said. Once the 2024 projects are accounted for, the firm can see what funds are left for the 32 schools still in line for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. 

“It’s a progressive learning experience,” Burke said. “We have those lessons in our head from the last cohort, so for the remaining schools we’re going to put them out to bid as early as we can to get on the contractors schedule.”

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.