A statewide open dataset of wastewater and stormwater infrastructure — pipes, manholes, treatment facilities, and service areas — built by UVM students in partnership with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.
The Vermont Wastewater Infrastructure Mapping project was initiated by Chris Campany of the Windham Regional Commission and funded by the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships at the University of Vermont.
From September 2024 to June 2025, 15 undergraduate students working through the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) program contributed over 2,000 hours to create a comprehensive statewide dataset of wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, filling gaps in the Vermont ANR's existing atlas.
Full project history and contributors →Number of Vermont's 256 towns have at least some mapped wastewater or combined sewer linear features in this dataset, but not all. This does not mean there may not be additional infrastructure, just that it is not captured in this dataset and may still need to be digitized from physical maps. Notable missing data include Burlington, South Burlington, Colchester and Williston.
Applying a 300-foot buffer on either side of every mapped wastewater and combined sewer line — representing the corridor most likely to have access to or be directly served by public sewer infrastructure — and intersecting that area with Vermont's town boundaries yields an estimated service footprint of:
This represents approximately 1.2% of Vermont's total land area (~9,613 sq mi). The calculation is based on 34,687 mapped wastewater and combined sewer segments, buffered at 91.4 meters (300 ft) per side, unioned to eliminate overlap, and clipped to Vermont's municipal boundaries. Areas with unmapped private or on-site septic systems are not reflected in this figure.
Using the 300-foot sewer service corridor (111.34 sq mi) as a study area, the chart below shows what share of that land falls in zoning districts that permit, require a public hearing, or prohibit each housing type — based on Vermont Zoning Atlas data. "No Data / Non-Residential" includes nonresidential and overlay districts plus unzoned parcels not covered by the atlas.
Within Vermont's mapped sewer service corridor, single-family housing (F1F) is permitted by right in 58% of the land area — making it the most widely allowed residential type. Access to sewer infrastructure drops sharply for denser housing: duplex (F2F) is permitted in 45%, triplex (F3F) in just 16%, and multi-family of 4+ units (F4F) by right in only 5.5% of the corridor. Instead, nearly half the corridor (49%) allows multi-family only through a public hearing or conditional use process.
Total length of mapped linear infrastructure across all of Vermont. This data provides an overview of the state's wastewater and stormwater infrastructure but does not include all private infrastructure and some towns may be missing data.
Vermont's mapped linear infrastructure dataset spans 3,235.5 mi across 120,709 individual segments collected from all 11 Regional Planning Commissions. Wastewater features account for the largest share at 1,547.1 mi (48%). Stormwater figures here reflect enclosed storm sewer pipe (Type 2) only, excluding open channels, culverts, swales, and ditches.
Wastewater (sanitary sewer) lines total 1,547.1 mi, water supply lines 270.2 mi, and combined sewer lines — where stormwater and wastewater share a single pipe — account for 20.8 mi. The small combined sewer total reflects Vermont's largely separate sewer systems, with legacy combined infrastructure concentrated in a few older urban centers.
Vermont's dataset includes 293 mapped treatment facilities across all 11 Regional Planning Commissions. However, there are only 160 facilities with a known permit category — municipal discharge (publicly owned treatment works), industrial discharge, and pretreatment. The remaining 133 facilities have no permit number or capacity data on file and are excluded from the category chart below.
Of the 157 characterized treatment facilities with mapped locations, 21 (13.4%) sit within a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) — zones with a 1% or greater annual chance of flooding (100-year floodplain). Flood zone status was determined by intersecting each facility point with the FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer via the FEMA ArcGIS REST API.
Facilities in the Marble Valley (MARC), Rutland Region (RRPC), and Two Rivers-Ottauquechee (TRORC) commissions show the highest flood exposure rates. The 21 at-risk facilities include notable municipal systems: Montpelier, Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Woodstock, Bradford, Hartford–White River Junction, Brandon, West Rutland, Proctor, Wallingford, Hardwick, Hinesburg, Winooski, Ludlow, Windsor, and Wilmington, as well as several industrial discharge facilities. Many of these are located in river valleys — along the Connecticut, Winooski, Lamoille, Otter Creek, and Black River corridors — where flood risk to critical wastewater infrastructure is a longstanding concern.
Select a regional planning commission to view infrastructure and zoning data for that region alongside summary statistics.
Vermont Agency of Natural Resources — official water infrastructure viewer
Official state geodata portal with current water infrastructure layers
Zoning regulations mapped across all 255 Vermont municipalities — related VERSO project
Source data, scripts, and documentation — open for contributions