When the flow of visitors in Steamboat Springs rises during heavy tourism times, so too does the waste, making management of the Steamboat Springs Wastewater Treatment Plant a challenging and often smelly job.
鈥淚t鈥檚 significantly harder to run a wastewater treatment plant in a resort town that sees a big influx of visitors than in a city where your population is static,鈥� said Jon Snyder, the public works director for Steamboat Springs. 鈥淐onsistent population makes a biological process easier to manage.鈥�
鈥淢ore people in town could create an upset in the biological process,鈥� Snyder said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 when that process gets upset is when it smells worse.鈥�
The plant鈥檚 operational status averages 60% capacity, but utilization can range from 26% during 鈥渕ud season鈥� when Steamboat sees fewer people in town to a record high of 72% in January 2022, explained Gilbert Anderson, plant superintendent.
The maximum 24-hour flow into the plant can fluctuate widely during the year; for example, the flow in 2024 peaked at 7.14 million gallons per day on April 5 and was the lowest at 1.87 million gallons per day on Oct. 16, Anderson reported.
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