Strategies for Rural Development in Areas with Limited Public Infrastructure: Alternative Septic Systems

Decentralized Systems: Warren, Vermont

Warren is a fairly typical rural small town.  It contains a picturesque historic village dating back to the early 1800s, when pre-industrial mills dotted the banks of its two rivers.   With a total population of 4500 and just 95 properties in the village area, there was no need or demand for a public sewer system for the better part of two centuries.  The only municipal infrastructure for wastewater prior to 1998 was a small clustered septic system, serving seven properties with poor soil conditions and other limiting factors that made them unsuitable for onsite system installations.  However, with increasing concern among river users about pollution from failing septic discharges, coupled with political pressure from village businesses in need of better wastewater disposal solutions, led town to consider a public sewer or a community subsurface wastewater system for the village area.  Massive flooding of the Mad River in 1998, which exposed several septic systems along the riverbanks forced town action, and helped to secure demonstration project funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).   Following an extensive program of needs assessment, water quality testing, and public outreach, the engineering consultant for the project developed recommendations as follows:

Recommendation

Status

Five properties:  add septic tank risers and effluent filters, with Town of Warren to manage the existing onsite systems

2/5 implemented

Seven properties:  design and construct replacement onsite systems

6/7 implemented

24 properties:  connect to a new cluster system with a capacity of 2,000 gallons per day, to be constructed at the town-owned gravel pit

implemented

Four properties:  connect to a new small, privately owned cluster system (these properties all had high groundwater tables or shallow bedrock)

Not implemented

Two properties:  connect to a new small, privately owned cluster system, using a proprietary alternative design rather than the standard stone bed treatment (these properties were located on the river, with insufficient acreage to build a conventional septic system).

Not implemented

46 properties:  connect to the existing town-owned cluster system at Brooks Field, which would be expanded from 5,000 gallons per day to 30,000 gallons per day to handle the increased usage

implemented

Elementary School:  construct an onsite system using proprietary components for treatment and the dispersal field, separate from the larger community systems (this would be a demonstration site and showplace for testing and evaluation of new and innovative wastewater technologies, of interest to both the town and the State of Vermont)

implemented

Of these initial recommendations, only the two large cluster systems, the school demonstration project, six out of seven of the recommended replacement onsite systems, and two improvements to existing systems were finally constructed.  Property owners on the sites recommended for small private cluster systems were not keen about hosting a community leach field on their land, and it was finally determined that all of the properties in the village could tie in to one of the two large community systems with the assistance of pumps.  Phase 1 of the project was completed in 2004, and Phase 2 was completed in 2005.

Although participation was completely voluntary, and not all residents and businesses chose to participate, town officials provided a strong financial incentive by offering free engineering and construction services to anyone wishing to tie in to the community septic systems during the first year of operation.  Approximately 90 percent of the eligible property owners in the village took advantage of this opportunity.  Unfortunately, the subsidy program ended and there have been few new users connecting to the system in recent years, due to the high connection costs.  Because the system was intentionally oversized during the design process to allow for future development within the village, the result has been a very large system operating at half its intended capacity, and existing users have to pay higher fees than they would if the system were mandatory for all landowners.  The Town Administrator is considering alternatives that would restore the connection subsidies, in order to encourage more participation by residents and businesses who passed on their first opportunity to connect, or who came to town after the first subsidy program had ended.

The Town of Warren owns and maintains both of the large community systems, with deeded right of access to the septic tanks and lines on individual properties.  It also manages two onsite systems that were upgraded rather than replaced during the EPA demonstration project.  The Warren Elementary School owns and maintains its own onsite system, as do all other private property owners with onsite systems.   Town staff or their technical consultants can monitor the status of all of the pumping systems and lines via remote radio telemetry.  Town officials also maintain an extensive public outreach program to keep system users informed on how to prevent future septic system problems, by being careful about water usage and what they flush down the drain.  All of the components in Warren’s decentralized wastewater system continue to work very well to date (June 2012), and the demonstration project for new wastewater treatment technology at the Warren Elementary School received the Grand Award for Engineering Excellence from the Vermont Section of the American Consulting Engineers Council in 2001.  Warren was not hit as severely by Hurricane Irene in 2011 as some Vermont towns, but it did sustain heavy rainfall and flood-stage river flows due to the storm, with no apparent damage or malfunctioning of its individual or community septic systems.

The current user rate structure is a flat fee that spreads the total operational, capital replacement, and debt reduction costs equally among all system users.  It is currently set at $150 per quarter, or approximately $35 per month.  The original plan was to have a rate structure that would be more affordable for residents with smaller homes (many of whom lived on fixed incomes), and that would also reward water conservation efforts.  Therefore the original plan called for an additional “bedroom fee” for each bedroom in a housing unit beyond the base rate that applied to one- or two-bedroom dwellings, and the final component of the quarterly user fee was pro-rated based on actual water usage as a proxy measure for wastewater disposal.   To measure water usage, remote-read digital water meters were installed on the intake water line for each property participating in the system. However, until more users come on board to underwrite the costs of town ownership and maintenance of the system, variable user fees are neither practical nor sustainable.  In addition, this multi-faceted billing system proved to be tedious and difficult for town staff to calculate and automate.  Therefore they have reverted to a simple flat-fee structure for all system users.

The Town Administrator, who came to work in Warren shortly after the systems were installed, stated that having the town own and operate these systems is a double-edged sword.  It is good for quality control and ensuring the long-term success of the various components of the decentralized wastewater system, but it also puts additional stresses on a lean town staff that is struggling to do more with less in an age of perennial budget cuts.  Although the program theoretically pays for itself, and most of Warren’s operations and maintenance work is contracted annually to a technical service provider, there are still hidden costs (especially in finance and administration) that are not fully covered and that siphon staff time from other municipal priorities.  The Town Administrator believes it would be better to would to create an independent sanitary  district to own and maintain the systems, though she does not think that will ever happen in Warren.

 

For more information:

                  Cindi Hartshorn-Jones, Town Administrator, cjones@warrenvt.org  or 802-496-2709, ext. 23

                  US EPA Case Study, March 11, 2005: http://www.epa.gov/owm/septic/pubs/warren_report.pdf

 

 

Related Work Plan Components

Workgroup Contacts

In Aroostook County: Jay Kamm, Ken Murchison, Joella Theriault

In Washington County: Judy East