Our Springs Protection Act has set into motion certain events that you can no longer stop. One of them is the eventual replacement of your septic system with new or alternative solutions. The Sludge Report would like to help. There will be no perfect solution. Tradeoffs exist with any choice. What is important is that as your municipality or county moves forward with selecting a replacement strategy, you must insist that homeowners are involved up front. Whether it is focus groups or just showing up at your commissioner meetings, you must approach this with an open mind and loaded with facts.
To help in this process, we have created five resources:
- An introduction and overview of what homeowners need to ask themselves FIRST! If you approach this unprepared, you will receive solutions that you do not like. Get involved, but first, get educated.
- Next are two interesting strategies that the Sludge Report sees moving forward within many counties. These are the use of pressurized sewers. We believe that the choice called grinders does not serve the best interest of homeowners. However, one called STEP may very well provide you a livable and affordable alternative to advanced septic systems. We will give you specific information on each.
- You may be told that there is a passive drainfield solution called “In-ground Nitrogen-reducing Biofilter Media Layer System.” If you are contemplating this solution, please read our analysis
- The bottom line here is that you should avoid all selections based on advanced septic system designs. Why? They are costly, they fail regularly. and they do not remove sufficient nutrients from our environment to make them worthwhile. See the Sludge Report entitled “Advanced Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems” for more specific information.
- Distributed sewers, the “Trojan Horse” claims to be a sewer but is nothing more than an advanced septic system. Learn the difference.
We hope you will use these resources to educate your neighbors and your elected officials who must make plans and decisions about septic system conversions. The financial and lifestyle impacts are huge and deserve serious consideration.
