By STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—Brandon has 22 miles of sewer pipes and Steve Cijka has been responsible for every last inch of them since July 5, 1988. Whenever a Brandonite takes a shower, washes their dishes, or uses the restroom, Mr. Cijka has made sure that the wastewater thus generated is collected and treated before being released back into the wild.
Now, after 36 years of dedicated service to the town of Brandon, Mr. Cijka is embarking on the next chapter of his career: retirement.
At the last Brandon Selectboard meeting, on Monday, October 28, Deputy Town Manager Bill Moore read a declaration into the public record recognizing Saturday, November 2—Mr. Cijka’s first official day as a retiree—as “Stephen Cijka Day.” And then on Thursday, October 31, Town Manager Seth Hopkins presented a copy of the declaration to Mr. Cijka at a small celebration at the Brandon Town Offices.
Mr. Hopkins has called Mr. Cijka an outstanding department head. Mr. Moore referred to him as a mentor and exemplary public servant. Members of the Brandon Selectboard were quick to sing his praises, lauding his integrity, thoroughness, and dedication.
At the celebration, Mr. Cijka thanked his crew—Tim Kingston and Ian Buckley—as well as the town staff who have helped him over the years, especially Town Administrator Elaine Smith, whom Mr. Cijka credited with teaching him how to write departmental reports.
Mr. Cijka is leaving the wastewater department “in good hands,” as he put it, with Mr. Kingston set to assume the role of department chief. His departure also coincides with the completion of a $5.8-million upgrade to the wastewater-treatment facility on Union Street, which was begun in 1960 with seed money from Shirley Farr, a wealthy Brandonite whose home is now the Lilac Inn on Park Street.
“I came to Brandon in 1988,” Cijka said in a recent conversation at the wastewater plant. “I got married here in 1992 and it turns out my wife Wendy’s grandfather, Galen Hutchison, was one of the men responsible for investing Shirley Farr’s money so it would cover the entire cost of the plant’s construction.”
So, one could say it was meant to be.
Mr. Cijka, now 65, is originally from Massachusetts and began his career in municipal wastewater there in 1980, when he joined the wastewater facility in Springfield, Mass., a city of over 150,000 people. The plant there handled roughly 50 million gallons of wastewater per day, with a total capacity of 65 million.
After Springfield, Cijka worked from 1986 to 1988 at the wastewater facility in Palmer, Mass., a smaller community that generated about 2 million gallons of wastewater per day.
By comparison, Brandon handles about 350,000 gallons per day.
“Most people start small and work their way up,” Cijka joked. “But Brandon is just about the right size for me.”
By 1988, while Cijka was still in Palmer, he was looking to be the chief at a department of his own. He had family in West Rutland and had always liked visiting Vermont, so he sent his resume to wastewater plants in West Rutland and Rutland City. The town manager in West Rutland at the time, Bill Finger, didn’t hire him but tipped him off to an open position at the facility in nearby Brandon.
“They were desperate for an operator,” he said. “My father grew up in West Rutland and when I told him I was taking a job in Vermont, he said, ‘You’ll work like a darn fool for nothing.’ The pay was low, but it was great experience. I had the highest-grade operator license when I came here but in Massachusetts, people only learned how to do the job inside the plant. In Brandon, I’ve had to learn both inside and outside the gate.”
Cijka lived with his aunt in West Rutland when he first arrived in Vermont in 1988. Soon he moved to a house in Leicester, then back to Brandon, then back to his aunt’s house. After he married Wendy in 1992, they lived on Carver Street, Union Street, and finally on High Pond Road in Hubbardton, where they raise dairy goats and make cheese under the brand High Pond Goat Farm. Their children, Emma and Joseph, were born in 1998 and 2002, respectively.
Cijka has been in Brandon almost 37 years and has seen a lot of changes in town. When he arrived, the Brandon Training School was still open and alone paid about 1/3 of the wastewater department’s annual budget. When the Training School closed in the early 1990s, the department found itself with an $88K hole in its budget.
“When I got to Brandon, the town manager, Pam Jones, told me they were running on a shoestring,” he said. The loss of the Training School put a big strain on the department. “But we made do.”
Over the years, Cijka has had to make sure that the plant’s equipment remained in good repair, met code, and stayed up to date. The first upgrade he oversaw was in 1997, when the old aerators were replaced. The aerators oxygenate the collected sewage to encourage the growth of bacteria that consume the solid waste.
A second upgrade took place in 2005 and then a third in 2024.
“This last upgrade didn’t fix everything,” he said. “But it fixed a lot of things.”
The sewage that ends up in the plant is transported there through the 22 miles of pipe that criss-crosses Brandon. Most of the sewage is carried along by gravity, but the town has 3 miles of “pressure” line that relies on pumps to get the sewage where it needs to go. There’s a pump station on Champlain Street, Newton Road, and by the Neshobe House apartment complex.
Over 80% of the town’s network of pipes is still the clay pipe that was installed in the 1930s.
“Clay will last 1,000 years if the soil is good,” said Tim Kingston, who joined the conversation at the plant, along with Ian Buckley. “It doesn’t corrode like metal. But the disadvantage is that it comes in short lengths and so you have a lot of joints where there’s potential for leakage.”
“You have to bed the clay pipe properly,” said Cijka. If the pipe isn’t supported by firm soil, it can sag and put stress on the joints, leading to cracks and leaks.
How do you know if the pipes are leaking?
“The leakage shows up above ground,” said Kingston. Someone from the department will go down and test a sample of the suspected leakage to determine whether it’s sewage or just water.
The town also spends from $20K to $22K per year on products to keep the system clear of tree roots, which will find and enlarge small cracks in their relentless search for underground water.
“If you have roots in your sewer line, cutting down the tree won’t necessarily fix the problem,” said Cijka. “The stump might still send out roots. You might have to pull the whole stump out.”
The legal particulars of the town sewer system are often surprising to homeowners, who are responsible for all the pipe between their houses and the main sewer lines. Fixing breaks, cracks, and leaks can sometimes be difficult because the lines were installed for efficiency of sewage transport and not for ease of repair, sometimes resulting in sewer lines going from one residence through a neighbor’s property to reach the main line.
And no maps were made when the lines were installed, sometimes necessitating careful detective work to figure out how to access a problem pipe.
“Always check with the town first if you think there’s a problem with a pipe,” said Kingston. “Let us figure out if the problem is on our end first, because it will be very expensive if you have to get a plumber involved.”
But sometimes the source of a problem is clear. Back in the winter of 2018, the main line that carried sewage to the treatment plant failed where it crossed beneath the Neshobe River just behind what is now the River Café. Especially heavy water flows had washed away enough of the riverbed to expose the pipe and the currents created enough bounce to crack a joint. The breakage allowed raw sewage to escape into the waterway.
Over the next 48 hours, the wastewater team had to bypass the break and build a dam to hold the water back in order to patch the 1960-era pipe, all while dealing with near-freezing temperatures. To make matters worse, the first patch didn’t hold and the crew had to have at it a second time.
“Welcome to the world of wastewater,” laughed Kingston.
As for the future, Cijka thinks the plant will be in good shape for the next several years.
“We have to keep up with the regulators,” he said, referring to the state and federal agencies that enforce an ever-evolving set of rules intended to keep our water clean. The plant itself is perhaps Brandon’s most expensive investment, both in terms of infrastructure and operation. Cijka estimates that it would cost upwards of $20 million to build a similar plant today. To protect that investment, Cijka recommends a visual inspection of the entire 22-mile network via camera probes. It’s a big, expensive project that would need to be carried out over several years.
Cijka’s job for the last 36 years has been to ensure that the sewage that enters the plant leaves clean enough to re-enter the ecosystem. It’s a relentless job that has required 24-hour vigilance 365-days per year. Now that he’s retiring, he can let his guard down. He’ll spend time working on the goat farm with his wife, fly fishing (his crew gave him a slew of fishing-related retirement gifts), and possibly taking up running again.
But he’s loved helping keep Brandon’s water clean and safe. The affection for and pride in his community is clear from the way he speaks about it. And the Brandon community thanks him for all the hard work and effort he’s put in to making sure we never have to worry where our wastewater is going. For the last 36 years, Steve Cijka has had it under control.
