About
The Wastewater Infrastructure Map was initiated by Chris Campany, Executive Director of the Windham Regional Commission and funded by the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships at the University of Vermont in the fall of 2024. The goal was to create a comprehensive map of wastewater systems including sewer lines, treatment facilities, service areas and service points. A wastewater system, also known as a sewage or sewer system, refers to the infrastructure designed to collect, transport, treat, and dispose of wastewater generated from residential, commercial, and industrial sources. The system typically includes a network of pipes, pumps, lift stations, and treatment facilities that work together to manage and process wastewater before releasing it back into the environment.
At the time of the project the State of Vermont Agency of Natural Resources had a partial map in their Natural Resources Atlas, but there were known gaps in the data. Mr. Campany hoped to both determining the scope of missing data and providing a tool for regional planning commissions and policy makings to understand where systems need creation, expansion or replacement to support housing in Vermont.
In order to complete this project, the Vermont Research Open Source Program Office (VERSO) at the University of Vermont brought together a group of students in paid internships through the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) program to bring together current maps and digital assets, conduct extensive outreach to towns and treatment systems for missing data and complete the mapping of the entire state.
From the September of 2024 to the end of June 2025, 15 undergraduate students worked for over 2,000 hours to create geospatial datasets and enter them into this GitHub repo, with the goal that the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources would take the completed file and update their atlas. The data creation was completed in June 2025, followed by quality checks of the data to confirm validity as much as possible.
This project consists of 5 layers to paint a picture of wastewater infrastructure in Vermont towns:
- Wastewater Linear Features: Includes pipes from wastewater and combined systems
- Wastewater Point Features: Includes manholes and some catchbasin locations
- Sewer Service Area: Service area for wastewater treatment plants
- Wastewater Treatment Facilities: Includes all municipal, industrial, and pretreatment wastewater treatment facilities and their hydraulic capacity information
- Onsite Sewage Disposal Soil Ratings: Depicts onsite sewage disposal classification of Vermont soils
Milestones
- Exploratory Research and Cataloging: Completed November 2024
- Outreach to Wastewater Systems Administrators: Completed February 2025
- Data Architecture and Development: Completed February 2025
- Dataset Creation: Completed June 2025
Contributors
Open Research Community Accelerator Pods
Summer 2024 Team- Emma Eash (Lead)
- Adrien Monks
- Aleah Young
- Fernanda De Oliveira Girelli
- James Catanzaro
- Jane Bregenzer
- Emma Eash (Lead)
- Gabe Christiansen
- Louise Vaillancourt
- Matthew Premysler
- Sian Hernit
- Sophia Miller-Grande
- Emma Eash (Lead)
- Aleah Young
- Louise Vaillancourt
- Matthew Premysler
- Sian Hernit
- Sophie Miller-Grande
- Gabe Christiansen (Lead)
- Andrew Chen
- Duncan Niess
- Harrison Taylor
- Julianna Elton
- Lily Fitzpatrick
- Louise Vaillancourt
University Faculty and Staff
- Kendall Fortney - Director Vermont Research Open Soure Program Office
- John Lens - Senior Lecturer, Professor of Practice, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Emma Spett - Program Coordinator, Engagement Initiatives, Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships and UVM Office of Engagement, Adjunct Faculty for the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics
State and Local Government
- Hank Ainley - Environmental Analyst, Department of Environmental Conservation, Water Investment Division
- Lynnette Claudon, PE - Senior Water Infrastructure Program Engineer, Clean Watersheds Needs Survey Coordinator, Engineering Planning Advance Project Lead, Clean Water State Revolving Fund Program, Design & Construction Engineering Section, Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation
Community
- Chris Campany - Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission
- Bill Hegman - GIS Specialist/Teaching Fellow, Middlebury College
Sustainability Goals
The project aligns with broader state objectives outlined in the Vermont Climate Action Plan, Comprehensive Energy Plan, and Long-Range Transportation Plan, fostering a holistic approach to sustainable growth and resilience. Once completed the dataset should be easy to maintain as the construction or decommissioning of wastewater infrastructure is fairly rare.
For more detailed information, you can visit the GitHub repository and the project page
Outreach and Presentations
The Wastewater Infrastructure Map has been presented at multiple events both as it's own and as part of mutltiple digital public datasets being created through the ORCA program. Presentations include:
- 11/7/24 - Green Mountain Water Environmental Association - Fall Tradeshow
- 11/14/24 - Vermont Housing Finance Agency - 2024 Vermont Statewide Housing Conference
- 1/9/25 - UVM Innovations - Improv at UVM
- 1/28/25 - Economic Development Professionals Gathering
Resources and News
There are many resources and new articles about wastewater data resources in Vermont. Here is a list of some (but not all) resources and news articles that may be related:- Summary of Chris Campany, Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission, January 5, 2023
- Bridgewater and Chris Campany: For addressing affordable housing funding matters, VTDigger, October 2, 2024
Related Projects
The Vermont Livability Map was made to bring together multiple datasets to tell a story about how housing can grow in Vermont. This site is under development so it will change as we continue work.
- Website: https:/verso-uvm.github.io/Vermont-Livability-Map
- GitHub Repo: https://github.com/VERSO-UVM/Vermont-Livability-Map
Vermont Zoning Atlas was started in conjunction with the National Zoning Atlas project to convert pdfs into geospatial (and computer readable) datasets. It was made through the effort of almost a hundred volunteer over a year, extensive partnerships and about 100k in grants and 25k in a private donation (which funded the ORCA work). We will be working on version 1.1 this summer to include updates in zoning laws.