Bids to come in this week to upgrade Burlington water treatment systems

Burlington Public works says its prepared to make upgrades to its systems, to better prevent overflow into Lake Champlain.

During Friday evening's storm, about the 1.4 million gallons of treated, but not fully disinfected wastewater and storm runoff was sent past the breakwater.

Officials say for about 50 minutes, water passing through their system didn't receive the required amount of disinfectant.

Without the added storm water, Public Works officials say its likely the system would have worked as it should. They say changes are in the works to prevent the problem in the future.

"There's going to be tank level alarms on the tanks themselves so it's not going to require an operator to visually check the tank. We're also going to have larger tanks, so had we had a larger tank this would not have happened," said head of the Burlington Public Works Water Division, Megan Moir.

The bids for the disinfection upgrades are due back this week.