The system was a pilot project and it proved so successful that last year it was installed in the resort’s two other base lodges, the Killington and the Bear Mountain. This wastewater recycling system was not only the first of its kind in the state of Vermont, it is one of only a few in operation nationwide.
Originally saving 10,000 gallons of water per day on peak days, the “blue water system,” as it is called, now saves up to 30,000 gallons of water on peak winter days, and more than two and three quarter million gallons annually.
“The system has actually surpassed our original expectations for fresh water savings and disposal savings by 23 percent,” says Carl Spangler, Killington’s vice president for planning.
With all three base lodges double plumbed, the wastewater is completely separated from other water systems. After receiving advanced secondary treatment with 20 minutes of chlorine contact time, the water receives a secondary flash of chlorination at each base lodge, maintaining a three- to five-parts per million total chlorine residual. To clearly identify the water, it is dyed blue with food color (liquid blue color, DJ17). The pipes for the non-potable water are also labeled and color coded to ensure complete separation of the water systems.
Signs in each toilet stall pose the question, “Why is this water blue?” Readers then learn that the flush water has been recycled and the systems are completely separated from drinking, cooking and water for other purposes.
The system at Killington includes 13,200 lineal feet of four-inch high-density polyethylene pipe, a 100,000 gallon concrete reservoir that provides 3.3 days of storage capacity, dual plumbing in the base lodges and several pumps. From the sewage treatment plant, treated effluent is pumped to a storage lagoon. Some of this water is then diverted to a 560-gallon wet well, receiving its primary chlorination on the way. From the wet well, the treated water is pumped to the 100,000-gallon reservoir. From the reservoir, the water is gravity fed to the base lodges and is injected with blue dye and fresh chlorine at the lodges.
Spangler estimates that, in addition to saving fresh water, the system frees up 30,000 gallons of sewage treatment spray field capacity on peak operating days, allowing base lodge seating expansion without adding to sewage treatment capacity. Operating the system on peak days also saves up to 40 percent of the fresh water used in the three base lodges. Killington’s president, Hank Lunde, placed a high priority on this system. “This system represents an example of how Killington and the ski industry are innovative in finding ways to minimize impacts on our environment,” he says. “We have found a way to recycle two and three quarter million gallons of wastewater each year.”
The total cost of constructing the system was over $500,000. The cost of operating the system at the Snowshed base lodge during the 1988-89 ski season was $21,000 and the operating cost of all three base lodges during the 1989-90 season was $60,000. “In our minds, the benefits of recycling and the need for capacity justified the expense,” says Spangler.
“The idea of recycling wastewater is certainly not new,” says George Bradley, Killington’s project engineer, “But this represents a new application. We have shown that it can be done. The first system we put in at Snowshed Base Lodge in 1987 was actually a prototype. We learned how well the system could work, made some very minor changes before expanding to the other two base lodges, and now we have a successfully expanded operating system.”
Because the Snowshed Lodge prototype system functioned so well, the only design changes necessary during the system expansion were the addition of pressure reducing valves, changing the pipes from copper to pvc to avoid chlorine corrosion and adding check valves and strainers to keep the chlorinated water out of the pressure reducing valve.
The system was designed by DuBois & King, Inc., Enman Engineering, Inc., and Killington. Construction of the system expansion took place between April and November of 1989, involving 10 Killington employees and engineers.
