 Small towns, urban fringe and suburban developments, rural communities across the country, a small mining village in the northwest, coastal residential areas. Across America, communities have learned that sewers and central wastewater treatment plants are not the only way to have a comfortable standard of living. A well-organized Community Onsite Wastewater Management System, or OMS, can ensure public health, enhance water quality, protect property values, sustain the environment, and accommodate growth for the long term. Examples of bound nationwide. Some communities have implemented an on-site wastewater management system from the beginning. Others have developed an OMS to address specific concerns or to correct failing conditions. All are successfully using wastewater treatment systems located in or near their own yards. But are on-site systems a modern way to treat wastewater? Are they really that dependable? Historically, seabitch pits and septic systems were constructed without much sighting or design guidance and received little maintenance. Failures were common. During the post-war housing boom in the late 1940s and early 1950s, millions of septic systems were installed. Despite improved septic tank designs, there were still widespread failures. Of course, the reasons that they failed early on was that we never recognized differences in soil and soil acceptance rates. Well, as a result of these continuing failures, it was reason that these systems are unreliable. Treatment begins in the septic tank. Solids and floating matters separate from the wastewater. The wastewater is then dispersed to the soil where most treatment occurs. The knowledge about soil has led to success with septic systems. The idea is that the soil contains numerous bacteria and the bacteria then aid in purifying the liquid as it passes by. With the air found in loose soil to breathe and with the food and the wastewater to eat, the organisms multiply and go to work. The water clears and as little as two feet of good soil. But good soil is not found everywhere. Only about one-third of the United States has soil suitable for conventional systems. However, there are methods that make up foresight limitations. An artificial drain field or mound can be built augmenting thin soils. Or the biological action of soil can be put in a box of sand or other media. These media filters are then used to pre-treat the wastewater before it is dispersed to the drain field. Another method of pre-treatment is to blow air directly into a wastewater container where suspended organisms are present. The organisms breathe, eat and multiply. When no more food is available, they die and settle, leaving clarified wastewater. These aerobic treatment units, or ATUs, pre-treat the wastewater before it is dispersed. There are many variations in on-site system design, but all utilize the same natural biological processes. David Van Heisen, Texas designer and consultant, has been working with innovative on-site systems for many years. The whole community doesn't have to be at one point or the other. The whole community doesn't have to be all centralized or all on-site. It doesn't have to all be this level of cluster or this level of cluster. You can have different areas of the community that can be managed in different ways. The idea is that the whole thing is one management system. If a good drain field cannot be found on everyone's lot, a cluster system may be a practical solution. Each house may have its own septic tank, but they are all connected to a single drain field. Cluster systems can be included with a variety of other on-site treatment methods within one effective community management system. The California Oceanfront Settlement of Stinson Beach has operated a successful on-site management system for over 25 years. The 700 residences and businesses occupy very small lots, served by on-site systems. In the 1970s, many septic systems were failing. To avoid the high cost and the population increase that sewers and a central plant might bring, committed residents developed an on-site wastewater plan using innovative alternative systems managed by the Stinson Beach County Water District. The engineering firm that I worked for before dealt with centralized systems. I thought that one time that was the only way to go, and I thought that septic systems were basically an old method until I came here at Stinson Beach. Looking at the way these systems operate and the monitoring system that we have here, I find that I feel that the cost-effectiveness of these systems more than outweighs the cost of a centralized system. The conventional and advanced on-site systems here are continually monitored and maintained to assure protection of the sensitive environment. I think the management program here will work in just about every location. If it's done properly and it's managed properly, you should not have a problem. These systems could probably last 40 to 50 years without a problem. Near the American River, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the planned community of Auburn Lake Trails has been successfully using conventional on-site systems, mounds and sand filters for 20 years, monitored and managed by the Public Utility District. The reason our zone works so well is because we've done such extensive work in defining the problems in the soil. And once those limitations have been identified, then we can engineer something that can address the limitations in the soil. But it does require some advanced technology. We test the effluent straight out of the sand filters themselves. And our district engineer has been very impressed how clean the water is inside these sand filters before they get dosed to the leach lines. It's important that these sand filters do their job. Otherwise it could send the effluent right down to our creeks and contaminate our creeks and streams. And we've never had a positive sample in our streams. When you have a problem with a septic tank, you have maybe a 250 gallon a day problem. When you have a problem with a sewer system, you've got a million gallons a day. And for rural America, dealing with a 250 gallon a day problem makes a lot more sense than trying to deal with a million. I'm very glad I don't have to deal with a million gallons of untreated sewage when there's a problem. In Edison, Washington, shellfish beds were being polluted by the local tidal slew, which contained effluent from failing septic systems and directly discharged waste. Doris Robbins and her neighbors were determined to find a solution that would not be too economically disruptive. We had to keep the expense down because this is a fairly low income community with four generations of people living here. We wanted to keep them here. To serve the 75 homes and businesses, community volunteers helped build a gravel filter. The local school district, also a major stakeholder, provided the high ground for the drain field and shares in the management of the system. We were able to cut costs per site from $20,000 to $7,000. And then for a certain income level, their costs were cut even further to $3,000. The first summer, people commented on how the slew didn't stink anymore. In the Midwestern Farm Village of Klossner, Minnesota, old septic systems were failing. Soil limitations were overcome by installing new mounds and clusters. The nearby Hamlet of St. George had similar problems. The community was in a violation threat from the county and from the MPCA, and they realized that they had to do something. And at that point in time, they came to the township to try and get some help with the county and try to find answers. The township planned and enabled a community-on-site management system, installing a cluster to serve the 23 homes and the management entity. As to management, people realize when they invest that kind of money nowadays into a septic system, just like you do a car, just like you do a house, you need to protect it, you need to take care of it. They may not know how to take care of it, and that's why we implement management tools that either help them understand so they can do it themselves, and choose to, someone will do it for them, and therefore they are protected. In the late 1970s, people in Otter Tail County, Minnesota noticed a decline in the water quality in their lakes. They decided to replace failing septic systems and start an on-site management system. Roland Mann administers the OMS and ensures the proper functioning of over 1,500 on-site systems in the district. Your sludge accumulates, your scum accumulates in your tanks, and they definitely need to be checked, and everybody's system is different. One person, one house can have to be pumped every two years, and another one might not have to be pumped for every six or seven years, that's what we're finding. And it just all goes back to usage, and the only way to find out is to monitor it, check the tank, see what's in there, see what's coming on the tank. If you don't, obviously the longevity of the system is going to be curtailed immensely. Water clarity in the lakes had definitely improved. You could go out and you could see the bottom In North Carolina, the area around Elizabeth City has extremely high water tables. Residents there use septic systems managed by the Elbermarle Regional Health Services on-site management entity. The OMS has been so successful that several adjacent counties have joined it. Years ago before we started the ME program we had like a 30% failure rate. Since we started the ME program we had a 1% failure rate. That to me says a whole lot for the management entity program. Many who work in Washington, D.C. live in nearby Fairfax County. The County Health Department's on-site management system, perhaps the first in the country, has overseen septic systems for more than half a century. Among the various management procedures, periodic pump-outs by licensed contractors are required. Management reviews ensure that the OMS can adapt to meet changing needs. Today it serves about 25,000 on-site systems. Based on the Clean Water Act of 1972, everyone thought that we were going to have sewers. And so a mindset developed that septic tanks are only temporary. We're going to have sewers. Well now in today we recognize clearly that we're not going to have sewers. But that mindset hasn't changed. We've been doing work here at UC Davis on intermittent sand fillers, textile filters. And the quality that you get is superior to what you produce at a wastewater treatment plant. And so from a treatment standpoint, on-site systems don't have to take a back seat to more conventional facilities. And because we can focus all of our attention on the treatment process, and we don't have to worry about the collection part of the process, it's really a much more cost-effective option than when you look at a central system, especially for sub-urban or rural areas. Communities of people in rural areas really choose to live there, are proud of their community and justifiably so, and want to take care of problems themselves. And this is a very, very appropriate way for a community to have a high standard of living with protecting the environment, protect the public health, but still maintain that rural character. Most of our staff has realized that you can't economically sewer all rural areas. In the areas that we have left that need additional, either for public health reasons or water quality reasons, wastewater treatment, this could be a viable option with the management component so that you achieve the desired treatment results and ensure the long-term viability of the systems. In our office, the on-site and decentralized program is one of our key initiatives. That's what we're promoting, is to look at the options, consider decentralized systems where you can get the community involved very early in the process, give them the information that they need to demonstrate that these are viable options. Located in Morgantown, West Virginia, on the campus of West Virginia University, the National Environmental Services Center specializes in providing information and professional expertise in water quality and wastewater issues to interested communities throughout the country. One of our primary areas of focus at the center is to actually move out and to visit with and to assist communities at the local level. Community leaders, local decision makers and residents of communities across America have a good, clear understanding, much of the time, about many of the issues that concern them, but they don't necessarily know where to draw on the resources, the expertise, or to receive the technical assistance. And so we here at the R Center send out into the field experts, draw on that resource, provide products and services and other related and ancillary support to enable communities to define and design their own destinies. A community really only has two choices. If change is inevitable and progress is optional, you can choose to do nothing. If you choose to do nothing, then the destiny of the community is not really in the community's hands. It's in the hands of those people who are creating the change. We have numerous communities around the United States that have been successfully using management entities of some form or another, in some cases for decades, and they have been able to do it successfully. So our job really here is to say, look at what others have done. We'll help you with understanding how others have accomplished this. It's not decision making at levels where you have to be fearful about what the outcome is. It's sorting through the options to design something that's good for your community.