It’s normal to feel a bit of trepidation, fear even, when asked to do something you’ve never done before, or to raise a question when you don’t know how its very subject might be received. But that’s a part of life, both personal and civic. Towns are being asked to raise hard questions about their future, and act on things they have little or no history dealing with. These are questions about housing, wastewater and drinking water infrastructure to support housing, public health, and community vitality, readiness for the storms and floods to come, and transitioning to a future with dramatically reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Many towns have deferred these questions, especially those related to housing, wastewater, and water, for decades. Those that didn’t are able to pursue funding for projects; funding at a scale that likely won’t be seen again for decades. Those that did defer now face the prospect of having to move quickly on questions and actions that don’t lend themselves to the deliberate pace communities are accustomed to because the availability of state and federal funds is relatively fleeting.

Building housing at any meaningful scale requires community wastewater and drinking water systems. Housing is not an abstraction in this context. By housing I mean being able to find and afford a home that meets your needs throughout your life here, or the needs of your children or parents or friends or neighbors. Our villages came to be at a time when we didn’t use nearly the quantity of water we do now on a household basis. It was a lot of work to get water into a house and out of a house, and to keep the former in a liquid state for about 6 months out of the year. Now we need to take very seriously the prospect that effluent from septic systems might be finding its way into drinking water wells and/or ground and surface water. That situation must be resolved. But there are other benefits. We are fortunate that our villages remain intact while so many elsewhere in the country have been abandoned. Keeping our villages vital means making it possible for existing businesses and institutions to intensify their water and wastewater demands. Being able to locate housing, senior housing, daycare, community centers, and other community and civic uses in and adjacent to our villages requires wastewater and water systems.

The reality of local government in Vermont is that the future of each town and each village is up to the residents of the town and the selectpersons they elect to make decisions on their behalf. We are here to help towns have these conversations and develop plans, projects, and pursue funding. We are here to support decision making by selectboards. The state is going to provide us with additional funding so we can have more capacity to support these conversations. Your conversations. I know that deciding to engage in big policy and infrastructure conversations can often take years. More than a decade even. But as I noted above, time is of the essence. Current ARPA funding and future programs under the Inflation Adjustment Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will run their course over the next 2 to 10 years. The time it takes to get grants to do project feasibility and scoping studies, design and engineering, and construction will consume every bit of that time. Making the decision to explore the feasibility and potential scope of community wastewater and water needs to happen now. Selectboard leadership, and citizen engagement with selectboards, is essential.