AP: Wastewater from breweries adding to lake problem in Vermont

Sometimes a problem just need the right push to reach the head of the line and here both the business community and the politicians share a common interest in tackling this issue.

 

I wonder how much of Lake Champlain's water quality issues are from farm run-off vs other sources (breweries or otherwise). Runoff from farms (sediment erosion, fertilizers, manure, irrigation) has a massive impact on lake water quality, and I suspect cumulatively more impact than urban wastewater discharges. (@bluehende?) Improving water quality in a watershed as large as Lake Champlain [or Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi Delta, Great Lakes, Puget Sound, etc.] needs an all-hands on deck sort of approach. However, farms often get exemptions from or lax enforcement of regulations, because no one wants to appear to be anti-farmer, especially in rural areas like VT, leaving others to pick-up the slack.

 

If you want to make an omelette...

 

I am confused here? The City released waste water and its the breweries water that is the issue not the crap from everywhere else. First off the City released the waste water so they are to blame. Second I have a hard to believing that waste water from Beer is so toxic it surpasses the swill they are taking in from sewers, medical waste, and God knows what else pouring into the system, its has to be the dam beer. LOL.
Sounds like I smell a new SIN TAX coming from the genius club in Govt. They figure hey, tax the drinkers...That is what I smell brewing here folks. They see lots of money in beer so lets add a disposal tax now... So the by product of brewing is below, sounds pretty safe to me verse I dont know medical waste and other toxic shit being dumped into the water from big business.
Cheers

Brewing by-products are "spent grain" and the sediment (or "dregs") from the filtration process which may be dried and resold as "brewers dried yeast" for poultry feed,[139] or made into yeast extract which is used in brands such as Vegemite and Marmite.[140] The process of turning the yeast sediment into edible yeast extract was discovered by German scientist Justus Liebig.[141]

Brewer's spent grain (also called spent grain, brewer's grain or draff) is the main by-product of the brewing process;[142] it consists of the residue of malt and grain which remains in the mash-kettle after the mashing and lautering process.[143] It consists primarily of grain husks, pericarp, and fragments of endosperm.[144] As it mainly consists of carbohydrates and proteins,[144] and is readily consumed by animals,[145] spent grain is used in animal feed.[145] Spent grains can also be used as fertilizer, whole grains in bread,[146] as well as in the production of flour and biogas.[147][148] Spent grain is also an ideal medium for growing mushrooms, such as shiitake, and already some breweries are either growing their own mushrooms or supplying spent grain to mushroom farms

 

I thought the same thing @AZBeerDude72, WTF does brewery water have to do with E. coli getting into the lake. But when rereading it the city is basically blaming it on the breweries/stormwater because it overloaded their treatment plant and it forced them to do the release of partially treated water.

 

You have to agree this smells fishy. I mean if you take one heavy rain would that not put more strain on the system than some breweries? What kills me is the bi-product is good for feed and other items, so it should not be serious. Honestly, I feel this could be an attempt to tax breweries to capture more coin, sadly I feel this but could be dead wrong. Just going off past history of stupid govt. ideas.

 

It is always better if we can lay blame to another party when we don't have our shit together, that is pretty much universal.

 

LOL that is so true. Would love to hear from some industry people who have dealt with this or know more. Would be interesting to see what they are seeing.
Cheers

 

Hmmm—

Craft beer is a major part of beach closesures due to E. coli?

Sounds like poor public’s works management looking to blame someone else.

 

"State officials said part of the problem was wastewater from breweries and food producers that upset the biological balance of the treatment plant."

 

Perhaps PA is different, but in NC, “State officials” will frequently hold everyone ELSE responsible for problems first—ESPECIALLY when poor state/local management was key.

 

Do you have a better explanation? Do you really believe breweries have e-coli in their beer waste water being flushed into their drains? Where do you suppose that water is going except to waste water treatment?

Edit: Notice that the local authorities are accepting blame in admitting they didn't anticipate the effects on wastewater treatment plants and adjust for it.

 

I am not sure how you were reading what I said. I am implying nothing of the sort— and neither is anyone else here.

 

Notice my delayed edit.

They were in fact accepting blame for poor mangagement because of unintended or unexpected side-effects.

 

Are you just looking to pick a fight? The original article has a large part devoted to discussing waste practices in brewing. The overall big issue is poor water/closures of Lake Champlain beaches due to E. coli. They have connected the two due to more waste water coming into the plant and discussed how it has affected microbiology but also there is discussion of excessive stormwater contributing to the problem as well.

All of this seems like sensationalist writing. Kind of cool to somehow linked the beer industry with too much cow poo/people poo ending up in Lake Champlain.

Perhaps you have a family member who writes for this or more likely you are continuing the excessively argumentative tone that so much of this site has now taken on. People want to point out and somehow correct everything or imply they know more about it. Good for you. I’m done.

 

No argument intended. My first post, which you chose to respond to, was simply to point out that the Breweries were not directy responsible for the problem but rather that the effect was indirect and unanticipated.

No I don't have a family member who writes for such a publication nor was my original post intended to be argumentative. Reflect on your own reply to that post and the possibility that it takes two to create an argument.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

 

@AZBeerDude72, @donspublic, @surfcaster

It looks like a significant portion of Burlington's waste water system is combined stormwater and sewage. This can be good because stormwater can also need treatment before discharge (Edit: FYI, many storm water systems discharge to surface waters without any treatment), but can be bad when large storms and/or melting snow can create more stormwater than the system can handle. The volume any waste water system can handle is finite and sometimes water has to be released before it is fully treated. You can't control the weather, you can't force a city to stop flushing toilets, it takes time and tax money to build new waste water infrastructure, but in the meantime, you still want to avoid causing conditions that allow bacteria to grow in surrounding waters, and there are some high-volume users on the system that you might be able to work with... what would you do?

 

One chapter in Palmer and Kaminski’s “Water” book had to do with the treatment of waste water effluent from breweries. Large craft breweries such as Sierra Nevada and New Belguim put in biodigesters to pre treat the water to get it into certain parameters that the sewage plant can handle. Raw brewery effluents are low pH, not good for the beneficial bacteria in the sewage plants, it can kill them off. If those die, the sugars from the brewery will provide food for the e-Coli in the waste stream, and the e-coli takes over. It is a known issue for big breweries, and they have to pay the sewage treatment plant more, or at a certain size put in their own pre treatment facilities upstream from the sewage plant.

https://www.brewersassociation.org/educational-publications/water-wastewater-sustainability-manual/

https://brewerywastewater.com/brewery-wastewater-101/brewery-wastewater-101-introduction/

 

Not an engineer, but I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last nite.... I don't know what they can do, but it should have been anticipated. They need to have a better way to deal with excess vs diverting partially treated water into a public lake. I would have thought that they would have designed the system to be able to divert storm water off when at capacity to prevent having an issue like this. Unless they upgrade their existing infrastructure, this will most likely happen again.