Technology turns waste to flakes> Treated water may blanket ski slopes

CARRABASSETT VALLEY — A technology that makes snow from treated waste water stands to ease the pressure on the town’s sanitary district.

“It would allow us to take (waste water from) almost unlimited growth,” said Larry Warren, chairman of the district’s board of trustees. Most of the district’s customers are clustered around Sugarloaf USA.

Making snow from waste water provides a safe and economic means of treatment, according to enthusiasts of the system. The process is new to Maine but holds promise for communities and businesses faced with large bills for traditional treatment plants.

Growth in the valley slowed at the end of the 1980s but is expected to rebound. Warren anticipates that a dozen new customers will hook into the sewer system this year.

The system now operates near capacity. The district faces a $250,000 bill to comply with a state mandate to build another storage pond. On top of that, Warren said, “currently, every 80 new homes would require the construction of a new lagoon.”

The Carrabassett Valley Sanitary District treatment system consists of an aerated lagoon and a series of settling ponds to treat the water, and holding lagoons to store it. Nearly all of the waste water is generated during ski season. It accumulates over the winter and is sprayed over woodlands in the summer.

Rather than build additional lagoons to cope with development, the district trustees turned to a technology that many in the community are familiar with, snow making.

Replacing the summertime spray-irrigation system with the snow-making system would cost about about $700,000.

Under an experimental license from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the district operated the system for a month this winter. The trustees hope to receive state approval to install the new technology this summer instead of building another lagoon.

The treatment facility is a few miles up Route 27 from Sugarloaf USA. Crews laid two 700-foot lines of steel piping with hydrants spaced every 60 feet and hooked a powerful pump to one of the lagoons.

It turned 5 million gallons of treated water into a pile of snow 600 feet long, 25 feet high at the center tapering to about 6 inches at the edges, and 200 feet long. It covered a little more than 3 acres.

Warren said the trustees need to know before the onset of construction season whether they will oversee the construction of a new lagoon or the installation of snow-making equipment.

District and DEP officials met earlier this week to evaluate the progress to date. The department has yet to endorse the full-scale project.

“We don’t have any major problems,” said Dennis Merrill of the DEP. “We have to look at any new systems very carefully. We realize the time constraints they’re under. But before we make a final decision we’d like to see as much data as we can.”

Delta Engineering of Ottawa, Ontario, who developed the system, calls it Snowfluent.

“It’s a marriage between two well-known processes, freeze crystallization and snow making,” said David Frere, a vice president of the company. Delta has installed snow-making equipment on mountains throughout North America, including Sugarloaf.

When water freezes and turns to ice crystal, it undergoes a complex chemical process and rejects impurities. And rapid freezing kills bacteria.

“In the springtime the melted water is as clean as pristine ground water, and what’s left behind is a quantity of nutrients that make a great fertilizer,” Frere said.

For the snowfield, the district plans to clear 30 acres of forest, seed it with grass and harvest the hay.

“The big value of Snowfluent is that you can process waste water in the winter as it comes in. I don’t harbor any doubts about it,” Warren said. He added that all of the board’s votes on the matter have been unanimous. “There just haven’t been any downsides that have popped up.”