Decentralized wastewater treatment presents us with a range
of possibilities for community preservation and watershed management. However,
these possibilities remain obscured by the limitations of the onsite codes and
unforeseen by municipal wastewater authorities unaware of decentralization or
reluctant to explore its range and potential.
From policy meetings in Washington to local communities
under pressure to allow development while maintaining water quality and the
quality of life, we are seeing indications of what Assistant EPA Director G.
Tracy Mehan calls a “change in paradigm.” This change is revealing
a distributed, performance-based infrastructure for wastewater management that
has the capacity to pay for itself. It also may provide the foundation for an
“institutional framework to support watershed management.”
If we consider decentralized wastewater treatment in the
form of a distributed sewer, its potential begins to emerge. Basically, the
system works like this: Small, individual or cluster type wastewater facilities
are maintained by a local utility. Therefore, the local utility provides
wastewater treatment services to residents (i.e., it distributes sewer service)
but does not use a traditional, centralized wastewater treatment plant to serve
a region (i.e., it uses decentralized wastewater treatment options).
New Community
“New Community” is located in the Southeastern
United States. Its process of discovery and reform are near completion. Since
the process of reform is fragile, it must remain anonymous until finished.
New Community is faced with significant development
pressure, difficult soils and the need to stimulate local economic development.
Several years ago it concluded that it could not afford nor would it receive
subsidies for a conventional centralized sewer.
In order to prepare for the fact that it would have to rely
on onsite wastewater treatment and disposal, New Community planners and health
officials concluded that they should increase lot sizes from 1?2 acre to
1 acre to provide for an additional disposal field in the event of failure. The
doubling of lot size would cut the value of real estate in half. The
alternative was to allow the 1?2-acre zoning if advanced treatment
systems were used.
In discussions with Community officials, health authorities,
planners and developers, environmental interest groups and citizens, the
following scenario was presented.
• The
community could double the lot size to an acre to provide for an extra disposal
field.
• Developers
could retain the current lot size if they provided additional treatment.
• Wastewater
treatment could be decentralized with on-lot or clustered systems.
This appeared to be the best solution and the one that fit
best under the health code. However, New Community was not eager to use onsite
aerobic treatment systems. Ultimately, New Community decided to look at
providing a distributed municipal sewer system. Their reasoning was as follows.
• There
are no major obstacles to more than one collection or treatment system in a
sewer district.
• Lot
size would not be an issue because under the sewer code the health codes would
not apply.
• If
the community provided municipal infrastructure, land values would probably
increase.
• Therefore,
the community had the potential to create additional house lots and increases
in property value for the developers.
• In
exchange, the community could secure a 50 percent open space design from the
developer and use that open space for storm water and wastewater management.
• The
community would require that the developer construct the wastewater disposal
system to meet watershed discharge standards.
Essentially, the developer would build the infrastructure to
meet watershed quality discharge standards and transfer it to the Community.
Planners anticipated that property serviced by municipal infrastructure would increase enough in value to offset the cost of building it.
In fact, as New Community explored the potential of
distributed sewer it became apparent that it could be an infrastructure with
the capacity to pay for itself. Properly structured,
• Growth
would pay for the infrastructure that supports it;
• Rapid
returns on investment would offset the costs to commercial sites through
disposal field preservation minimizing business interruption; and
• Appreciation
in property values generally associated with municipal infrastructure would
offset some of the costs of remediation.
New Community’s rezoning is expected to be completed
this spring. Developers have open space subdivision designs ready for submittal
under the new zoning codes. The process has taken about two years. Its novelty
and its effort to incorporate the principles of community preservation,
watershed standard and value-based procurement are unprecedented.
This transformation is primarily a process of changing
relationships and releasing value. It has little, if anything, to do with what
can be bought with government funding. Its success depends on the process of
public participation and of respecting and trying to address the interests of
all members of the community.
When New Community started to discuss decentralized
wastewater treatment, some senior Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
officials were unfamiliar with the concept. Similarly, state legislative
efforts to secure 20 percent open space for development had failed to pass. Many
communities as well as their professional engineers are not yet familiar with
the potential or the process for the implementation of distributed sewer.
Insight
Distributed sewer offers communities the opportunity to
assert their authority in the service of their citizens’ wealth and well
being. It is a pragmatic and democratic response to the real wastewater issues.
It is active citizenship in pursuit of a framework to increase water quality
and supply, to preserve the quality of natural systems and recreational
resources, to enhance property values and provide for economic development,
community preservation and the quality of life.
“Distributed sewer” is so immediately available
and the risks involved in testing its efficacy so minimal that those communities
who neglect exploring its potential will have to ask themselves if they passed
on an extraordinary opportunity.
Some communities are beginning to understand this. They
understand that they must create it and that their citizens will pay for it. They
also understand that if it is to be successful it must be done relatively
quickly in order to preempt the ever increasing percentage of new construction
(currently between 40–50 percent nationally) that is being built with
septic systems.
A Change in Paradigm
New Community is an indicator of a change in paradigm.
Consider the pervasiveness of nonpoint pollution, the acknowledged economic
limitations of the State Revolving Funds (SRF), the inherent complexity of the
issues and the Clean Water Action Plan’s search for an
“institutional framework to support watershed management.” They are
indicators that water quality and supply and the preservation of the natural
systems on which human communities depend are beyond the response capacities of
the two traditional approaches to wastewater treatment.
Obstacles to this change are onsite code limitations and the
lack of knowledge by water and wastewater professionals to the potential
benefits of a distributed infrastructure for watershed management.
Currently, the voices of change are being sounded in the
wastewater industry.
At its 2001 annual conference, the National Association of
Local Boards of Health (NALBOH) recognized that the Environmental Health Codes
are an “obstacle to the watershed agenda.” (Ted Pratt,
Congressional Liaison, NALBOH)
In Mehan’s comments to the Environmental Economics
Advisory Committee, “Building on Success – Going Beyond
Regulation,”1 he said,
• “Times
have changed dramatically since the existing regulatory framework was put in
place.”
• “Point
source controls alone are not capable of achieving or maintaining ambient
environmental standards.”
• “The
technological and economic limitations of our existing regulatory framework are
at hand.”
• “The
remaining water pollution problems are significantly more complex.”
• “Complex
problems require innovative solutions and entail a change in paradigm.”
These ideas also are finding a political voice. Georgia
Governor Barnes, as reported in the Atlanta Constitution on April 3, 2000 said,
• “Someone
has to decide how to build more infrastructure to handle the fast growing
counties…that are starving for it.”
• “But
addressing water quality issues in already developed parts of the
region….also is an imperative.”
The industry also has had its first hints that the future
holds a dramatic change in perspective. Bruce Babbitt, former Secretary of the
Interior, stated in his 2001 WEFTEC keynote address, “You are in the
water supply industry, and you are not only water supply managers, but you are
increasingly going to be watershed managers.”
Creating Change
At the 2002 Conference of the Pennsylvania Association of
Townships, John Borland of the Pennsylvania DEP told a planning seminar,
“You must create the change you expect to see in your community.”
Innovation, even innovation going beyond regulation, is
imperative at the highest policy levels. At the regulatory level, the command
and control structure restricts and often prohibits the innovation that many
regulators conceptually endorse. However, it is at the community and watershed
levels, where it is increasingly difficult to meet environmental standards,
that innovation must be fought for, practiced and realized.
In a way, regulatory institutions are struggling with
credibility because they are failing the tests of locality. Communities and
watersheds require a framework for management that is diverse in its approach,
performance based in design, affordable, adaptable and responsive. Essentially,
Mehan’s “change in paradigm” requires that our institutions
become more dynamic and our regulatory requirements become more site specific
like the natural systems they seek to sustain.
Decentralized wastewater treatment, under the structure of
the sewer codes, has the capacity to meet these expectations if we release it
from the traditions and allow it to address what Mehan insists are our
“responsibilities of stewardship.”
Decentralized wastewater treatment is not simply an
extension of the onsite approach or an alternative to centralized sewer. It
anticipates a new ethos in which wastewater is no longer simply an issue of
public health but one of water resource management. It is the capacity to place
wastewater treatment in the service of the watershed agenda and to manage
wastewater as both a pollutant and resource.
Consider a network of treatment systems strategically placed
to reduce specific limiting pollutants and to assist the assimilative and
regenerative capacities of the natural system into which they discharge.
Designing and managing these systems can be a fraction of the cost of
traditional sewer.
Consider wastewater a resource as well as a pollutant.
Distribute this capacity to treat, manage and reuse wastewater under the sewer
codes with consistency and economy throughout a watershed, and you can begin to
get a sense for the potential of a distributed infrastructure.
Our sense of urgency is not unique. Scan the literature on
EPA and state regulatory websites and you cannot miss the unprecedented level
of concern for water quality and supply or the underlying recognition that
reform is at once both necessary and elusive.
An Obstacle Worth Considering
Reform is elusive, in part, because the barriers to
reciprocity, trust and collaboration are formidable.
For example, contrast New Community with the past experience
of the Metropolitan Madison Wisconsin Sewer Authority. Speaking at the 1999
Water Environment Federation Small Communities Committee Conference, Jim Nemke,
the now retired director of the authority, said,
• “Watershed
management plans have been abandoned because of the lack of an implementation
authority beyond the point source permit program.”
• “While
regulatory authorities promote movement away from a command and control agenda,
their structure remains command and control and this restricts the ability to
form consensus.”
• “The
EPA, DNR, USDA and those concerned with state health can’t cooperate
sufficiently…and don’t.”
Nemke is clear. The assumption that the barriers to a
distributed infrastructure are technological or economic is a distraction from
the more fundamental issue, if not patently false. Essentially, New Community
has figured this out.
Ed Corriveau of the Pennsylvania DEP also has figured it
out. “We now know new partnerships among industry, regulators and local
decision-makers must emerge relatively quickly or the old solutions will
threaten water quality, property values and economic development, community
preservation and the watershed agenda.”
It is mismatched, missing and inappropriately scaled
institutions and their limited mandates that frustrate the collaboration that
is so essential to reform.
Indications of the Next Infrastructure
Besides New Community, other authorities are in the process
of building a new wastewater infrastructure. For example, in Northern Alabama a
rural county initiated legislative reform to set the stage for a distributed
infrastructure for wastewater management. Also in Alabama, a metropolitan area
will take approximately 100,000 gallons off its central sewer system, treat the
wastewater and reuse it to subsurface irrigate a park.
Taking stress off central systems and water reuse may be
only the start of a new agenda. In its FY 2002 Strategic Plan, the EPA’s
Municipal Support Division concluded: “If current levels of treatment are
not increased, by 2016 wastewater treatment plants will discharge about as much
Biochemical Oxygen demanding pollution as they did in 1972, before the nation
adopted the landmark secondary treatment standard.”
In Massachusetts, watershed interests are exploring the
roles they might play and the responsibilities they might assume to eliminate
the loading of nutrients to drinking water aquifers and coastal estuaries. The
irony they confront is that one primary source of nutrients is 1995 code
compliant septic systems.
In Pennsylvania they are experimenting with affordable
permits. In other states there is discussion of income tax deductions and
property tax abatements to promote clustering and management. There also is a
discussion of the use of State Revolving Fund money to provide government loan
guarantees in order to leverage the volume of funds available.
Wisconsin’s “Green Tier” and
Massachusetts’ “Environmental Results” programs are
contractual alternatives to the standard permitting process that offer
flexibility and incentives in exchange for the pledge to exceed code compliant
discharge standards.
These are not projects for public health purposes. They are
novel approaches that may prove to be extraordinarily consequential. They are
indicator projects for the next infrastructure.
Observations
Almost five years ago, Larry Selzer of the Conservation Fund
and the National Forum for Nonpoint Source Pollution independently anticipated
the origins of a “watershed framework for conservation.”
“First, this framework will be based on collaboration,
not confrontation. Second it will fully integrate economic reality into
environmental protection. Third, I believe it will be led by the private sector
and the non-profit community, not by government. Fourth, it will be
technology-driven. And lastly, I believe it will be community based.”2
Selzer’s insight is profound. To ignore it is folly.
The next infrastructure will be community, county or watershed based. Moreover,
we are convinced that creative and responsible proposals at this level will be
encouraged and supported by the regulatory community.
It is time for legislatures across the country to take the
time to understand their role in creating the potential for a framework to support
watershed management. As we have suggested, neglect is not benign or without
consequences. Delay, if we take men like Bruce Babbitt and Tracy Mehan
seriously, may be an ethical breach of responsibilities.
Communities need legislative and regulatory cooperation and
reform to support their initiatives. The Clean Water Action Plan is clear.
“Engaging the full range of public and private interests in the
transition to the watershed approach will require the development of an
institutional framework to support watershed management.”
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