N.H. town turns treated wastewater into ‘e-snow’

WOLFEBORO, N.H. – These 30-foot high mounds of snow didn’t fall from the sky.

The “e-snow” or “effluent snow” is the result of pumping 2.5 million gallons of liquid from the storage lagoons at the town’s sewer treatment facility through snow-making guns.

The goal is to improve the storage capacity of the lagoons, whose levels are more than 25 percent higher than last year due to heavy rains last fall.

Sarah Silk, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen, said the e-snow process has worked well in other places, such as Rangeley, Maine.

Wolfeboro has been working closely with the state Department of Environmental Services on the pilot project, she said, and has proposed several warrant articles totaling several million dollars for its March town meeting to develop long-term solutions to the problem.

“It’s not the ultimate solution to our problems, but it helps us make the best use of our existing treatment capacity,” said Scott Lees, the town’s director of water and sewer utilities.

The effluent, a mixture of water and solids that has been treated at the plant, is held in five lagoons and eventually turned into compost.

But the amount coming in is exceeding the plant’s storage capacity, resulting in an order last April barring new sewer hookups until the town upgrades its treatment plant.

In the spring, summer and fall, the town uses a spray irrigation system to reduce the amount of effluent in the lagoons. But that isn’t an option in winter, so the town turned to snowmaking.

The giant ice mounds won’t fully melt until late June and will slowly release water into the ground during the spring and early summer.

Last fall, voters rejected a $2.5 million bond issue to take a 93-acre parcel of land by eminent domain to expand the irrigation system.