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Wastewater planning includes basic elements but depends for its success on careful analysis of local conditions.
By Penelope B. Grenoble
Wastewater master plans: The idea seems so, well, comprehensive. What actually goes into one of these tome-like documents? How does a plan get developed? What kind of resources are required? According to the folks at the Onsite Wastewater Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island’s Cooperative Extension, wastewater plans should look closely at land use, population pressures, and natural features such as geology and soils. To be effective, plans should include public education and consider financial incentives where applicable.
To get a better idea of how this kind of planning actually gets accomplished, we visited four communities nationwide, each with its own set of challenges. We began with the greater Atlanta region in northern Georgia, which tackled a plan that required consensus from 16 counties and multiple municipalities. From there we proceeded to the resort community of Nags Head, NC, which used its master plan to manage the use of the onsite systems it prefers to protect public health and the environment—and keep development in check. Next up was McDowell County, WV, where the citizens of the region’s abandoned coal camps took it on themselves to develop a plan that would rid them of the straight pipes that were fouling their wells and surface waters. Finally in Olympia, WA, planners have wrestled with a ban on onsite site systems as critical to the city’s recent five-year update of its wastewater master plan.
All plans take a long-term view of wastewater management, make careful examination of natural conditions and development trends, and rely for success on establishing local buy-in. Although varying approaches were taken to reach these goals, common elements include techniques to assess current circumstances, evaluate opportunities that would address current and future challenges, and prioritize future action. Funding depends on a combination of federal, state, and local sources, including grants and loans.
A Water Shortage in North Georgia
In 2001, the Georgia National Assembly passed Senate Bill 130 establishing the Metropolitan North Georgia Planning District for the purpose of coordinating long-term water, wastewater, water conservation, and watershed management planning. A confluence of circumstances influenced the development and passage of the legislation that set the planning process in motion, including the fact that growth in the region is expected to almost double from 4 million in 2000 to 7 million in 2030, putting stress on existing potable water and wastewater systems. The amount of wastewater expected to need management when the 7 million residents have settled in is projected to be 978 million gallons per day (mgd), with an additional 50 mgd managed by onsite systems. With 90% of existing treatment facilities discharging to surface waters the area uses as a source of drinking water, water and wastewater management are intimately related. Because the region’s underlying geology is predominantly crystalline bedrock, which lies close to the surface, there is little available groundwater or subsurface storage, leaving most of the annual precipitation to run off into the Chattahoochee River.
Wastewater is currently managed through 233 centralized treatment facilities, only 103 of which are publicly owned, and most treat only 1 mgd. Both planned and indirect potable reuse are practiced in the district, the latter typically through release of treated effluent upstream of water supply intakes. Approximately 21% of the region’s wastewater is handled via septic systems, which account for 10% of existing housing in densely populated areas and from 40% to 90% in developing areas, despite the region’s poor soils. In many areas installation of septic systems was developer driven and viewed as a temporary solution, pending construction of sanitary sewers. Region-wide septic systems are considered water consumptive.
Two key factors influenced the north Georgia plan. Because the assimilative capacity of surface receiving waters had been basically maxed out, the state’s Environmental Protection Division has basically ceased issuing new discharge permits. Additionally, water quality in approximately 55% of streams in the district did not meet standards for designated use, largely due to excessive fecal coliform. Georgia is currently under a federal consent decree to develop and implement total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for impaired streams, and although most of the impairments are caused by nonpoint-source pollution, the court had threatened to shut down future water and wastewater permits, effectively halting future development. Four years of drought conditions drew additional attention to water issues.
The North Georgia Long-Term Wastewater Plan took 18 months to develop, looks 30 years out, and is designed to integrate with plans for water delivery and conservation and overall watershed management. The cornerstone of plan development was a series of facilitated meetings between the technical coordinating committee, which comprises local county and city utility staff and is designed to provide information, guidance, and feedback during the plan-making process, and six basin advisory councils, which are the vehicle through which the interests of citizen stakeholders are represented.
“It started around comparing projections of water needs and wastewater flows with the sustainability of the resource,” says Pamela Burnett, vice president of Metcalf & Eddy in Norcross, GA, who acted as project manger for the consultants providing water supply and wastewater expertise. “Once you got that on the table, people could see where the pressure points were.
“There’s a tremendous pressure against onsite systems, not because they don’t work, but because of water shortage. In this area the concept is that water that goes into a septic tank will never be available again, whereas when you send water to a wastewater facility for treatment, you can catch it and meter it and reuse it very quickly. So one goal of the planning process was to call deliberate attention to the pluses and minuses of onsite systems, including how to properly site and manage them and their applicability to low-density developing areas. This initiated a tremendous amount of discussion around the issue, which before had been ‘us versus them.’”
The secret to achieving consensus among a wide variety of stakeholders, says Burnett, was “perseverance, solid study, and keeping our eye on the prize, which was that nobody wins at the expense of anyone else. Our goal was to bring as much information to the table, boil it down into key messages, and keep driving the process forward.
“Typically with plans, we start from where we are and plan forward. In this case we looked at where we wanted to end up. We gathered the utilities together in the very beginning and said, ‘We see where the water is; we see where the people are. What would we do if we could do it all over again?’”
Among other conclusions the plan recommends consolidating wastewater treatment into 48 plants and increasing water-quality protection by upgrading the level of treatment plus enhancing treatment reliability. A 76% to 78% county-by-county goal was established for rate of return of recycled wastewater to streams, with the objective that water generated locally would be retained locally. The plan recommends local governments establish additional requirements for onsite systems including minimum lot size, and those residential systems be sized to accommodate garbage disposals. Another key recommendation is that local governments require onsite systems be pumped every five years. The plan also recommends that management and performance of individual systems be tracked through the establishment of a septic system database.
“There was a tremendous amount of pushback when we said that septic systems are fine but they need to be maintained,” says Burnett, “but at least now the discussion is informed.” Her projection is that management will likely fall to the state’s Environmental Protection Division, rather than the health department, which lacks staff for the effort.
Management Is Key on a North Carolina Barrier Island
The town of Nags Head, NC, has no problem with onsite systems, which are in fact the town’s wastewater treatment of choice. Over 4,000 residential systems are currently use in a town that is about 80% developed but where older homes are being replaced by higher-density housing for the seasonal rental market.
The objective for the town’s wastewater master plan was to enhance oversight of onsite systems in a reasonable and cost-effective manner, ensuring not only that they’re well managed but also that system owners have the information and tools they need. The county health department administers onsite systems under 3,000 gallons per day (gpd), and the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources does the job for design flows over that amount. The town’s authority comes through its zoning regulations, which require a building permit once the county health department has issued an authorization for construction. Zoning also limits the number of bedrooms in single-family homes to eight and sets the maximum size of onsite systems to 1,080 gpd (calculated to be equivalent to an occupancy of 18). Potable water is delivered by a town water department, which bills property owners by the gallon on a tiered rate based on consumption and maintains records on water use.
In the late 1990s, a Nags Head citizens’ committee developed a Septic Health Initiative, which went into effect in 2000 with four core provisions: a septic tank pumping and inspection program; water-quality monitoring, with water samples collected from 30 groundwater monitoring wells and 15 surface-water points; an education and public outreach program; and what would eventually be a wastewater management plan. The initiative was funded by revenue generated by the water department and was administered by the planning department. By the time the community committed to undertake wastewater master planning, nearly a third of all the town’s onsite systems had been inspected, with 31% classified as failing because of sand bottoms (which are open to soil), saturated soils, effluent ponding, septic field, and generalized failure. To get a better handle on what the community was facing and what it should do about it, the town engaged Stone Environmental Inc. of Montpelier, VT, which developed a centralized information management system using available data, a network of monitoring points, and four years of results from the Septic Health Initiative’s water-quality monitoring program.
Analysis of this information was used to determine the various impacts of onsite systems on groundwater and surface-water quality as well as which onsite system characteristics were most responsible for water-quality impacts. Although they were not necessarily causing surface failure, older, substandard systems such as sand bottom tanks were found to be impacting the environment as were systems located in areas of shallow seasonal high groundwater. Properties where there was high water use were established as potentially impacting the capacity of the onsite system to sufficiently treat wastewater effluent. High total phosphorus, high fecal coliform, and elevated nitrate were found to be associated with water use greater than system design flow and systems more than 20 years old.
Using its analysis of system-related water-quality effects combined with comprehensive GIS analysis, Stone developed a list of potential options for the town to consider in its wastewater master plan. These were put to the local citizens’ committee, which approved a voluntary, incentive-based program that expanded on management efforts already in place. Critical elements of the plan also included additional educational and outreach efforts, maintenance assistance through voluntary inspection and pumping, development of a loan and grant program for system repairs and upgrades, continuance of the water-quality monitoring program, and expansion of data tracking and reporting.
“We have quite a few repeat customers who come back every three years and go through the same process,” says Deputy Planning Director Bruce Bortz. “The town pays for the inspection of the septic tank. We keep a copy of the report and send the original to the homeowner. When the homeowner gets their tank pumped, they get a $30 credit on their water bill. A survey conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that 98% to 99% of past participants would use the program again. When you hand something like that to your elected governing board, they’re very happy.”
According to Bortz, Nags Head is currently investigating sources of funding to help residents replace failing or substandard systems through the state’s Clean Water Trust Fund. He considers that the success of the program and quick adoption of the plan by the governing board are attributable to the fact that compliance is voluntary, combined with the wide-ranging membership on the citizens’ committee, which he describes as including everyone from the Nature Conservancy to the local board of realtors and representatives of civic organizations. “The committee met for almost three years before they proposed anything to the town governing board. The word trickled back. And it’s a pretty easy sell when you offer money to pay for inspections and a rebate on getting your tank pumped.”
Down to Basics in West Virginia’s Hallows
The challenges were more basic in McDowell County, WV, where an aging population of approximately 10,000 is spread out in abandoned coal company towns. This is steep, hilly country where communities of 20 to 30 homes are clustered in creek bottoms, sandwiched between what commercial development there is, the highway, and the railroad tracks. Only four of the county’s 10 towns have municipal sewers; the rest rely on straight pipes that deliver raw sewage directly to the nearest creek or stream. This is low-income country—median household annual income is $16,931 (60% below the national average)—and recent unemployment rates hover around 13%, more than double the state’s average.
Although the county’s population has steadily decreased since the heyday of the 1950s, a 1988 West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection study found that 54% of 87 streams sampled contained high fecal coliform counts (more than 400 organisms per liter), a situation that was shown to have worsened when the department did another round of sampling three years later. The bad news about stream contamination was followed in rapid succession by two major floods. Almost 3,000 homes were involved in the 2001 incident, and a year later the county found itself trying to dig out from under another $54 million in damages. A long-term flood recovery task force was established to help speed recovery, which included such challenges as sewage contamination of drinking-water wells. In February 2003, community members, faith-based organizations, and representatives of local and state government took the effort one step further, forming the McDowell CountyWatershed Coalition to evaluate the county’s wastewater challenges. Three committees were formed: a best practices committee, which would research traditional and alternative treatment technologies and their applicability to the county, including costs; a management options committee, which was charged with researching wastewater treatment management models along with prevailing regulations; and the where-projects-go committee, which eventually developed a set of prioritization criteria to be used to rank projects and created an educational brochure about the need for wastewater treatment.
The coalition met monthly and the committees met on an as-needed basis. Eventually a five-step process evolved that included ongoing development of the coalition; assessment of existing conditions, including mapping of existing wastewater treatment on a parcel-by-parcel basis; identification of appropriate technologies; construction of demonstration projects; completion of a countywide wastewater treatment plan; and initiation of construction of top-tier projects as identified in the plan.
According to Ed Winant, an environmental engineer for the Canaan Valley Institute in Thomas, WV, who was actively involved in plan development, the coalition was an informal group that included representatives from the county commissioners; the county health department; the state Department of Environmental Protection and Bureau of Public Health, plus the National Small Flows Clearinghouse in Morgantown, WV; the EPA; and town mayors, local faith-based organizations, and citizens at large.
“It was generally viewed that the best place to intervene,” says Winant, “was a situation that would have impacts on both public health and the environment and could be cost-effective, which meant that a relatively minor project that would have a major impact was prioritized above something expensive that wasn’t seen as having that much of an effect.” A second critical factor, says Winant, was the level of community involvement. “A community that was pushing and was ready to go might be pushed up the list above a community that had a larger need but needed more education and buy-in.”
To establish the state of wastewater management in the county, a plot-by-plot analysis was accomplished by combing information from the county assessor’s office with health department permits for septic systems, an effort that was complicated by the fact that systems weren’t permitted before 1970, were filed alphabetically by applicant, and weren’t updated when a property was sold. (In West Virginia, individual onsite systems are regulated by the county health department and anything larger than one home falls under the Department of Environmental Protection, unless it has a subsurface component, when the two share responsibility. The Department of Environmental Protection also regulates anything with surface discharge—i.e., a sewage treatment plant.
The job of going through all the records and entering them into a database tied by GIS to the assessor’s map was accomplished by an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) volunteer. “This information was really an excellent tool in determining where the hot spots were,” says Winant. “And because it’s GIS-linked you could go through the streams and enter any data DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] has collected on water quality—fecal counts, nutrient loading, and dissolved oxygen. If the database showed 30 homes located in the area of a polluted stream, you knew you had a place to start.”
Winant estimates 60 to 80 projects were identified by the citizen coalition. After two demonstration projects were constructed as an initial strategy to educate the community, the first full-fledged project was approved in Ashland, a community of approximately 18 homes located close to a trailhead for a regional all-terrain vehicle trail. The town had originally been ranked as low as third on the project list but was bumped up because a development group had renovated the old company store. The storeowners agreed to contribute funds to construct a community cluster system and then hook up to it, which effectively got the Ashland project off the ground. Additional funding came from the Canaan Valley Institute and EPA 319 money funneled through the state Department of Environmental Protection. Money was also forthcoming from local faith-based organizations, specifically the Presbyterian Church, which had been active in the planning process.
The coalition is now planning a system for a second town, which Winant projects will be another cluster. Next up is an EPA-funded workshop for existing public service districts that addresses the question of management and maintenance. “The public service districts don’t know what they’re getting into,” says Winant, “so they don’t know if they want to take on the responsibility. And if they refuse the responsibility, we have to find a management entity, which has actually stymied a few projects. We’ve also invited engineering firms to the workshop—to get the point across that these systems can easily be maintained and taken care of.”
A Strategy-Based Master Plan
The official mandate of the Olympia, WA, wastewater utility is to protect public and environmental health by ensuring wastewater is collected and conveyed to treatment and disposal facilities with minimal risk. The city plans and manages the wastewater system for its 45,000 residents with the goal of accomplishing its land-use, environmental, economic development, and growth management goals. Olympia also provides sewer service within the 17.5 square miles of the incorporated city limits and portions of its urban growth area (UGA), where properties reflect small urban lot zoning. The city also operates over 1,500 city-owned STEP systems and three community onsite sewage systems. Utility activities are guided by a wastewater management plan, which according to state mandate must be updated every five years. The 2007 update will guide planning, design, operation, and financing of Olympia’s wastewater system until 2012.
Many parcels in Thurston County are currently served by onsite systems, which were not connected to public sewers after the area was annexed to the city, despite the fact that sewer pipes were laid in the general vicinity. In the 1970s, concerns about public health risks associated with onsite systems led the county board of health to begin requiring inspection and certification of onsite systems. Under current state and county regulations, new onsite sewage systems are allowed only when they can function properly, are in suitable soils, are located at a safe distance from a water well, and where no public gravity line is accessible. Under state and county standards, onsite systems served by a public water system must generally be located on lots of at least 12,500 square feet, with a density of three and half lots per acre or less.
In 1981 the county began requiring operational certificates for commercial and residential systems, and in 1991, the Olympia City Council passed an ordinance requiring hookups to the sanitary sewer system for onsite system users with reasonable access to sanitary sewer pipes. Seven years later, due to lack of convincing data, as well as the cost to homeowners to connect, the council amended the ordinance to allow functioning onsite systems to operate. But there was more to come.
In 2006, the city identified 1,770 individual onsite sewage systems within incorporated Olympia and an estimated 2,250 in the UGA. This meant that approximately 20% of single-family residential development in Olympia and its UGA utilizes onsite systems. Additionally the county is currently issuing an average of 28 new onsite system permits per year in Olympia’s wastewater service area. Approximately half of these are within city limits.
Olympia’s government sees the current challenge as extending sewers to serve new development, both infill lots in the city and undeveloped areas of the UGA, expeditiously enough to prevent the installation of more onsite systems. The situation is complicated by the fact that development rates for single-family housing are expected to continue increasing dramatically in the next few years.
“There were two key issues,” says Andy Haub, who as engineering and planning manager in the Olympia Department of Public Works was instrumental in the development of the 2007 master plan update. “These were whether we were going to continue permitting onsite systems within city limits and the need to convert existing onsite systems to gravity sewer and how we would set this up. What the city council decided was it was not going to permit additional onsite systems within the city limits. There’s a no exception clause, and we’re currently struggling with that.
“The council recognized there’s a public health issue and a public benefit associated with conversion, so it will help subsidize that effort. We estimate that there’s about $26 million worth of rather expensive conversions that would have to be made in the city, which is where the time frame becomes essential. We’re not proposing to totally convert everything, and we’re not thinking like we usually do, five to 10 years out. The only way the plan makes sense is if you think in terms of a 20-year time period.
“From a public health perspective, we didn’t have the justification to support septic systems on small urban lots. Our public health concern is associated with groundwater, which is our source of drinking water. We have nitrates and fecal coliform showing up. We’ve tagged the source of nitrates primarily to fertilizers and septics, and we’ve expressed our concern that onsite systems are a fine technology in a rural setting—but not the way we’re developing in the city and the urban growth area.
“We mapped the onsite systems in the city and identified which ones were within 200 and 300 feet of existing sewer lines and which ones were probably topographically situated so that a gravity system would work. Then we went so far as to project out the ones that would never be connected for one reason or another, which turned out to be about 100.”
Haub, who comes from a stormwater background, brought what he calls a strategic rather than an infrastructure approach to the issue of wastewater planning. “I’ve been critical of utility master plans that have focused on infrastructure,” says Haub. “Infrastructure is a tool, and it shouldn’t be the focus point of a long-term plan but rather used to implement that plan. So I put off decisions on infrastructure and pipes and pumps and all those things that engineers like me love until the end. Instead we spent most of our time focusing on what is in our system and what is happening from a public-health perspective.
“We divided things up between STEP systems, onsite systems, and sanitary sewer and examined the challenges in each area and what we need to do with each. What we ended up with is more comprehensive than what we have done in the past, which was focus on the sanitary side of things. It was a struggle, but we kept coming back to public health. And given that perspective, the focus shifted to onsite systems.
“What we did was spend a lot of time trying to understand the system and what it was we really wanted to accomplish. When you read the plan, you see this keeps coming up again and again. When you jump to infrastructure-driven plans, you miss that step. So our thought processes started with defining the challenges and issues for each one of these three types of infrastructure at some level of detail. You really have to look at it a number of times before you peel off the surface and really get down to what the challenges and key issues are. From there you develop strategies that can be revised as you go along. We’ve found that if you spend time at it, these strategies carry for years because they reflect an understanding of the challenges and the issues and problems that you’re faced with.”
The next step in Olympia’s long-range wastewater planning process, says Haub, “is a public meeting with onsite system owners. “I’d really like to hear if we’ve come up with something feasible or not.”
Journalist Penelope B. Grenoble is a frequent contributor to environmental publications. OW - September/October 2007
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