By CHRIS COLLINS
(South Deerfield, MA) — One of the more popular items produced in this community is beginning to cause major problems for its ailing wastewater treatment plant.
Deerfield officials met Thursday afternoon with representatives of the Berkshire Brewing Company to discuss the impact the plant’s discharge is having on the South Deerfield Wastewater Treatment Plant. According to Trevor McDaniel of the Deerfield Selectboard, which also serves as the town’s board of health, the effluent being released from the Berkshire facility is too heavy to be properly processed by the treatment plant’s lone clarifier, which is not functioning properly and is due for replacement.
“It’s not just the beer itself, but the byproducts of the brewing process,” McDaniel said. “It’s the hops and barley and the stuff that comes out of the tanks which is very dense that is causing the problem.”
McDaniel produced a video during the meeting of the clarifier being overrun by foamy discharge and a glass of treated wastewater, which appeared to be cloudy and full of sediment. Water treated at the plant is eventually released into the nearby Connecticut River. McDaniel said further compounding the problem is the plant itself, which only has one clarifier, where most plants usually have two.
“If we had two, it would be less of an issue because we could switch over to the other and we’d have more capacity,” McDaniel said. “Here we just have the one and it’s not working right to begin with.”
McDaniel said the town is about to begin a project to overhaul the South Deerfield plant and replace the clarifier, which he said will be tough to do unless effluent levels are greatly reduced. And though the Berkshire discharge is a new problem, it’s not an unfamiliar one for Deerfield, which, for years, was home to the Oxford Pickle Factory, which produced products for Cains foods and routinely sent large amounts of discharge into the South Deerfield plant, necessitating a special arrangement with the town regarding the timing and volume of those releases. Berkshire owner Gar Bogoff suggested that town officials visit his brewery to learn more about how the facility operates, which would make it easier for all parties to come to an agreement on how to move forward.
“What we want is a solution that benefits everyone,” McDaniel told Bogoff. “We want you to be able to run your business, but we have to find a way to protect the town as well.”
Deerfield is not the only community dealing with this type of issue. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority sent notices to dozens of cities and towns warning about the potential impacts of large amounts of beer being dumped into sewage and septic systems. The closure of bars and nightclubs during the COVID 19 pandemic has left a lot of bars with kegs of unused now expired or “skunked” beer which needs to be disposed of somehow. The MWRA says dumping said beer down the drain can have an adverse environmental impact on sewage systems, and can create problems akin to what is occurring today in Deerfield.