 Good evening and welcome to the next generation of on-site sewage treatment conference. On behalf of the planning committee we hope that you will go away from this conference tonight with some information about alternative sewage treatment systems as well as how individuals and communities are using some of this technology to solve their sewage treatment problems. By treating sewage what we're really talking about is the recycling of water while protecting the human, while protecting human health and the environment. The co-host for tonight's conference are from the University of Minnesota Extension Service, Barb Lucanen, and Fred Burgsrud. Thanks Ken. Good evening from St. Paul, Minnesota. We're really pleased that you could join us tonight for our third annual sewage satellite conference. I'm Barb Lucanen from the University of Minnesota Water Resources Center. The conference tonight is being downlinked to about 45 sites here in Minnesota and about 35 sites in 15 other states. So we welcome viewers from across the country. Some of the information tonight may seem most appropriate for Minnesota or specific to Minnesota but most of the examples and the alternatives we'll describe in the research are appropriate across the country. We're going to use a format of some in-studio, live panel discussions and some taped segments that will show graphics and examples of the alternative systems to describe them a lot better than we could describe them talking about them here in the studio. Each site coordinator got a packet of information in advance so hopefully everyone has an agenda and there are other fact sheets that will provide some additional information about the segments during the evening and some additional background information as well. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has decided that the ISTS professionals here in Minnesota can get continuing education credits for attending the conference tonight, two CEUs. And if you want to get that credit you need to let your site coordinator know and the site coordinator has to keep a record to make sure that we have evidence that you attended the conference. Also during the evening you'll be able to call in or fax in your questions and at the end of the night we'll have about a half hour where we'll have some experts here in the studio who will answer those questions. And the number that you can use to call in is 1-800-657-3677 or you can fax in at 1-800-657-3678. Fred. Good evening. I'd add my welcome to that of Ken and Barb to this satellite conference tonight. My name is Fred Bergdrude and excuse me I'm a professor emeritus from the University of Minnesota Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department. Tonight when we talk about on-site septic systems, whether we're talking about traditional systems or alternatives, we're talking about treating wastewater not simply disposing of it. The purpose of that treatment is to safeguard both our human and environmental health. Now all of the options that will be described this evening require careful evaluation to see if they fit your particular situation. And if they do then we also have to look at what's the management required to keep them effective over time. Not to discuss some of those issues around treatment and management here's Dave Gustafson from the University of Minnesota. It's interesting as we look at systems and ordinances they kind of boil down to two things treatment and management. Treatment being how the system works and how it takes care of all the problems management on how I get to work on the system. The things that I have to do to make sure that system is going to operate or take care of those problems over a long term. Let's look more closely at those two pieces treatment when we say treatment we're talking about the removal of the problems that we've added to the wastewater. In particular the problems are the toilet paper or the solids the other stuff which is typically measured using BOD which is biological oxygen demand. The pathogens or the things that make us sick typically measured using viruses or fecal coliform and the other nutrients and the two that we get the most concerned about are nitrogen and phosphorus. Now how does a system treat or how does a system take care of those different pieces? The solids or the chunks are taken care of typically in the front of the septic tank where settling and separation take out those big pieces. There's a lot of people that think well then it's done if I've taken care of the toilet paper but no the problems in particular the pathogens and the nutrients are still moving with that water and so we need that second piece which is that in most standard systems or conventional systems the soil treatment area. In the soil treatment area the soil works as a filter as well as a magnet or an attractor where it absorbs or it grabs on to the different nutrients and the pathogens as they move through making sure that we take those out. So the system performance is the treatment or the removal of all those problems. Now we can have a couple choices right now that is that we've talked about the soil treatment but we can create other processes that will go through some of that same thing. The use of an aerobic tank or the use of a sand filter which is a soil treatment unit put inside a box is another method to get at the same treatment. So I have now multiple choices for treatment. I then need to look at the second component which is what do I need to do to take care of that. Now management is a big term to look at four specific pieces. The management is the daily operation or taking care of the system maintenance which is a physical act that I have to do to take care of it to make it last the way it's supposed to. In some systems it may include monitoring. Monitoring would be that I'm checking to make sure that the system is working the way it's supposed to and then the last piece and this is kind of the negative side of management is that I need to fix it if it's not working and the five-dollar word for that is mitigation. So when I look at management that the four categories are operation, maintenance, monitoring and mitigation. Going back and looking at those a little bit more closely and talking about specific examples is let's revisit a conventional system. In a conventional system the operation starts with the homeowner or starts with you because how you use water is going to make a significant difference in terms of how the system works. So the daily operation of a conventional system is starting with water use. The maintenance portion then of that conventional system is removing the solids from the tank that is at some point in time and depending on how you operate or use water you're going to need to pump the solids out of that septic tank. Now some of you may be saying but Dave if I do it all right I never need to take care of my septic tank, that's not true. All septic tanks will get filled at some point in time so I need to maintain or I need to remove those solids out of the system. Now it's interesting that in a septic tank maintenance and monitoring can fall into the same category that is checking to make sure that it's not full would be the monitoring side pumping it when it is full would be the maintenance side. But let's take and just change my example just a little and let's change now that instead of using a septic tank I'm using an aerobic tank. In that case now the monitoring is going to be a little bit more in that an aerobic tank needs air to make it work. So the monitoring is going to be to verify or to make sure that the air is being added into the system because without the air it's no longer an aerobic tank and the design is not the same as a septic tank so it's not going to work the same. So I've added now some additional components as I made the choice. Now the important thing about adding those isn't that they're there but that they change how I'm taking care of the system or they change how often I need to monitor or look at the system or they may change what I need to do to fix it if I'm having problems. So the piece treatment which decides which choices are okay for my site management what I have to put into the system are going to be the two pieces that come together that help me make the right choice for where I live to take care of the wastewater for an extended period of time. To restate what David said he said the purpose of any system is to treat wastewater but before you make that selection of what treatment system to use you need to consider what type of management is required. Now there's a publication in your packets that's part of the individual sewage treatment series fact sheets that's called planning systems new technology new management you may wish to refer to it to get some of the points that Dave made. Now to further emphasize the management piece of that here's a clip from our educational video on septic systems. Yes cleaning means removing all the solids and sludge from the septic tank any solids left in the tank could plug your baffle or be forced on the drain field when the tank refills pumping flushing and back flushing liquids back and forth between the pumping truck and the septic tank will break up solids so it can be cleaned out cleaning must be done through the manhole never through the inspection pipes it may be easier to get to the tank that way but it's an impossible way to get a good cleaning and a good way to damage tank baffles cleaning through the manhole also allows a thorough inspection of the tank this is an important part of any cleaning because it can catch serious problems like damaged baffles or roots breaking into the tank the cost of having a tank pump may be one reason people put it up but it's relatively inexpensive compared to having a tank replaced or repaired due to improper maintenance another reason might be to probably determining when to clean or how long since the last cleaning for these people contracts can be set up where the contractor determines a regular cleaning schedule i get asked a lot about the commercial additives are available for septic tanks there's no such thing as a safe and effective septic system attitude the additives that are safe in the environment probably won't clean the septic tank they do clean the septic tank they're not safe in the environment the fact of the matter is there's no substitute for proper maintenance as john said that maintenance that proper complete and regular pumping of your septic tank is important to keep the system working the way it should be or way it can and that is a responsibility as us as homeowners whether we have an alternative system or a standard or traditional septic system and we're going to use that language a lot tonight alternative standard traditional performance system you may use different language in your state than we use here in minnesota and just to make sure that we're all on the same page we're going to have a segment from mark wespital from our minnesota pollution control agency who's going to talk about how we classify systems here in minnesota and again there's another fact sheet this one is called onsite system options and we'll tell more about how we classify systems here in minnesota the 1989 revisions to minnesota rules chapter 70 80 which are the state standards governing individual sewage treatment systems classify systems based on two main criteria number one they're known ability to perform and two whether or not they use soil for treatment the key word here is known as we will discover when talking about each separate classification the first classification is based on soil based systems soil based systems are systems which use a three foot vertical separation distance from the system bottom to the seasonly high water table or bedrock this three foot separation is needed for both treatment and disposal soil based systems are classified as standard alternative and other again these classifications are based on known reliability with standard systems having the highest degree of known reliability the degree of reliability is known because of research both here in minnesota and other states field testing and successful widespread use over a long period of time the other systems we will speak about may have a high degree of reliability but not enough evidence has been gathered to prove that standard systems include below ground trenches below ground beds mounds and at grade systems beds and trenches can be used on a well-drained soils which are deep to water table or bedrock at grade systems can be used on soils with water tables or bedrock below 36 inches from the ground surface mounds can be used with a water table or bedrock is between one and three feet below the ground surface sand is added to the soil surface to maintain a three foot separation distance it should be noted that the size of the soil treatment systems is dependent on the soil texture whether it be sand or clay and the water use of the dwelling now that we've talked about soil based systems let's look at other major grouping the non-soil based systems also known as performance systems performance systems can use any method to treat and dispose of sewage as long as it protects the groundwater and the public health and sewage is not exposed at any time performance systems are designed with a pre-treatment device followed by some sort of drain field which can be placed closer to the water table or bedrock or it can be made smaller options include sand filters gravel filters peat filters constructed wetlands and aerobic tanks it should be understood that the use of the different systems is based on the local permitting authority local permitting authorities are typically counties with some areas being regulated by cities and townships the suitable use of new different technologies should be written into the local septic system ordinance local permitting authorities do the choosing about which systems will be used and under what circumstances they will be used the agency is excited about the future application of these new technologies as mark described we have two types of systems here in minnesota the soil based systems and the non-soil based the soil based systems include both alternative and standard systems and the non-soil based systems which are also known as performance based include a pre-treatment unit like a sand filter or a peat filter and then a soil dispersal system as well and at the end of his segment mark mentioned local authorities and that is local authorities who permit wastewater systems have the ability to decide whether they will accept alternatives or not and which systems they will allow in the next segment you'll hear four representatives of county zoning and planning environmental health offices around minnesota giving their perspective on local decision making and how they apply the rules locally because we're far north we've got a lot of cold soils and a lot of high water tables a lot of lead rock or bedrock and conditions that make it really hard to treat wastewater and get it into the ground and so as a result of that we have many areas that conventional systems don't work well including we're at a lake including our lake properties here or properties where houses are scrunched together for whatever reason and so we've been forced to look at alternative systems just simply because um conventional systems don't work well well there may be an exclusion in the rule that doesn't allow them to put them in or there isn't sufficient space or whatever we have so alternatives here are something that are a necessity and we've been looking hard at as everybody in the state has been at different ways of treat wastewater um smaller areas uh more efficient methods and uh there's been a lot of interest from the public on doing that I guess St. Louis County is trying to take the role of being a uh advocate of change but doing it cautiously or conservatively we don't want to see um runaway uh technology because there's going to be bad that comes with the good on the other hand uh we want to do the best we can and trying to encourage people to try things new and see if we can learn from them what works and what doesn't work I think it's important especially especially in our area where the environment plays such an important role of the day-to-day lights of our day-to-day lives of the citizens of Cass County and the tourists that come to our area it's so important for our economic base and the well-being of the citizens here and it's important that the government realizes that they have to be a part of that part of the solution Rice County put in their sewage and wastewater treatment ordinance in 1998 a provision on performance-based systems and through that we regulate these as far as what is required is an operating permit if they have less than three foot separation distance uh in their from their dispersal field to this saturated soil with the operating permit it's all it's good for five years and what some of the requirements are is that it has to be monitored also part of this is that they have to have a mitigative plan uh stating that if what if this whatever pretreatment unit is used if it's not working what are the steps they're going to take to mitigate the problem starting with the least severe to to the most drastic the the county's ordinance is a little bit restrictive on some of the uh non-standard systems but i think for a good reason um i don't see them being real appropriate for new construction in other words our ordinance requires two backup standard systems in order to to use some form of experimental system i see them really being appropriate for uh existing homes and solving problems well as you can see barb and i have been joined here in the library by a couple of guests that you've already experienced via tape but they're here with us live now the first one is on my far right that's craig dilbertson and craig is from cast county environmental services there and he's also active in the minnesota environmental health association said he seated next to me is dav gustison a colleague from the biosystems and agricultural engineering department at the university of minnesota craig and dav are with us to summarize uh some of the events that we've heard about now up to this point in the conference so dav thanks fred i get to kind of introduce or go back to that summary on treatment and the thing i want to highlight there is that when we look at all the different choices that the use of the term treatment means that all of the systems are going to deal with the problem so that even though we may have two different routes as barb explained using soil or using another pretreatment device to get there the final end point is the same that is treatment it's just a different route to get there the other thing too in terms of minnesota lingo or minnesota jargon and standard is standard means that we understand that the system gets to that treatment level and what it takes to uh maintain and take care of that system craig and talking about maintenance proper management is essential in all types of systems uh it's whether it's the homeowner that periodically goes out and looks at that gravel trench gravity trench or whether it's a homeowner that hires a professional maintenance company that looks at the more complicated system of say drip dispersal or a sand filter you have to get involved with your system once it's after it's installed you just can't flush it and forget about it that's true and beyond not forgetting about it the different choices that is all the different alternatives don't mean that standard systems aren't a good choice that the idea using a conventional septic tank trench in the right conditions can be as effective a treatment mechanism as the more as the other alternatives and when you're talking about alternatives it's important that the local authority is involved because the local authority is going to be approving it permitting it and also watching the system to make sure that's operating for the length of the system okay thanks uh uh davin craig uh we we've now highlighted i think some of the types of systems and have confirmed that the local authority does have the ability to uh use some non-conventional systems or to control the kinds of systems that are used in their area so now we're going to describe some different alternative systems and see when it might be appropriate to choose an alternative here in minnesota of course we're concerned about proper wastewater treatment across the state but there are some situations that cause special concern and tonight we're going to focus on three of those special situations first we're going to look at instances where an individual home has a problem with a non-site system next we're going to look at the special characteristics around our lakes and rivers in shoreland areas and the third scenario we're going to consider tonight is in small towns where communities are working together to solve their wastewater issues and in the first set of tapes that you're going to see here we're going to focus on individual homes who have a problem with a traditional system either because the water table is high or the lot size is small or because there's not enough soil to the bedrock or some other reason that a traditional system wouldn't work there is a another handout and this is this legal sized one that will tell you more details about the different systems that we're going to talk about tonight talk about cost and about flow design and the kind of system that has been installed so let's run the footage we have two homes on our system our home has four bedrooms and the second home has three so there's a total of seven bedrooms and we needed a new system and we have a problem with soil here in that it's a very tight clay and so we would have had to put in a mound if we were going to go conventional and I thought that let's try something different and we had heard about this aerobic unit we went to the authorities and was able to convince them to let us put it in and it's performed a little over two years now flawlessly it's producing a real good effluent from the house that goes into a 1200 gallon conventional septic tank so far we haven't pumped that but I think that we're going to just as a precaution before winter from the conventional septic tank it goes into the aerobic unit that is about 1200 gallons I believe and from there it goes into what I call a sump tank it's just a holding tank and when that gets nearly full pump automatically kicks on and puts it out into the drip line the drip line has a manifold on it and six lines a hundred feet long each one and it is hooked so that it could recirculate if it didn't get rid of all of it in the first pass and you know everything is underground I can't tell you whether it does or not but the pump don't run very often so apparently it's it's getting rid of it in good shape we have a very good black loam soil here very rich runs anywhere from 18 to 24 inches deep on top of solid yellow clay that's nearly impervious and that yellow clay because it's so watertight is what they call modeled and so that you can't put a conventional drain line in to model soil and so that's is the system that we have and we were very concerned about freeze up here being that it's only 18 inches down we spent an extra $400 of that 7000 total for a thermocoupler that went out in the drain field and give us constant digital readout of temperatures we also did some some testing sent some of the effluent to a testing lab and we found out that it was taking out about 60 percent of the nitrates only about 25 or 30 percent of the phosphorus but you know your your drain field is capable of of taking care of that the pathogens of course I'm sure that I don't do anything to the bugs that's in there from my experience with the watershed district we saw a vast difference between county officials in looking at new alternative systems some were exceedingly afraid of it and maybe some might have been too lenient but I think there should be a happy medium and I think that that county officials should be looking at new ways of handling this septage as our population grows and it will we have to be looking at at better means about two years ago we started to notice a problem where our lawn was getting a discoloration in the grass and we started to notice some seepage near our garden area and so it was about two years ago and then it just kind of gradually last summer about a year ago it would be got worse a little seepage became a little more heavier especially during rainy periods of the year or rainy season type times of the year where the grass would get darker or discolored and more moisture obviously started to come to the surface and so we knew something would need to be done we are installing relatively new system it's called an aerobic water treatment system basically what it does we have an existing septic tank that we're going to continue using but we're adding on another tank which is follows the first tank the existing septic tank where the water will be treated more thoroughly with basically air oxygen we can use the existing drain field pipe that we have so we don't have to dig that up so there's also advantage of not having to dig up there's also there's cost savings there one thing I think we do need to do is to basically have it tested periodically and I can talk into one of the people that has the works for the aerobic system company that we should have it tested about once a quarter and that'll be the biggest change but other than that no we pretty much should be able to keep up with our normal lifestyle and hopefully everything will keep running smoothly and improve. Talking to our Rice County environmental specialist we basically need an operator's permit for this type of system I guess because it is so relatively new but I think I guess I think it'll be it'll be a good learning process for for us and to be able to monitor and and check our water and be a good thing for the environment like I said hopefully too we'll be able to test it and make sure that what we're our septic system is running good and smooth and so I guess we're basically we're optimistic about what's going to happen hopefully and down the road here once we get this online. The main thing to matter with the soils here is the fact that during wet periods of the year particularly in spring and fall the water table is within two to two and a half feet of the surface so the problem here is is that the current set of trenches that they have installed does not have adequate separation distance between the bottom of those trenches and where that seasonal water table comes into play so that what we're doing here is correcting the problem by adding this sand filter as a component of the system to provide additional treatment before we do a final dispersal into the soil system. In this home effluent travels from the home into a new septic tank that separates solids from liquids. The liquid moves by gravity into a second tank. A pump on a timer recirculates the liquid between the tank and a sand filter containing layers of p-rock and coarse sand. The coarse sand which actually looks like it may be a gravel as you run it through your fingers plays the main role in terms of the treatment of the septic tank effluent that we're going to put into it. That's the area where the bacteria that will reside ultimately in the sand will break down the organic matter and provide filtration of the effluent as it recirculates back into the recirculating tank and then is taken from there out into the original set of sewage treatment trenches. We ended up having to build a custom box because it was going to be above ground. It needed to be strong enough then to hold the four feet of material that's going to be inside it. We're going to put a plastic liner inside of it to hold the sewage or the treated wastewater inside it. It's going to increase the value of the property and it sounds like it's a very simple system so hopefully there shouldn't be any a lot of upkeep. The solid waste unit is just what I said solid waste. Anything that's that is either human product or comes from a garbage disposal is all is all going into the one composting unit. When we run the garbage disposal there's a fair amount of water that is used to spray down and and help clean out your lines so there is a fair amount of water plus any urine that goes in there. Well that system has the composting unit has a small sump pump in there and that allows for any urine or water that is produced in that tank to settle down through the compost. It finds its way out the bottom of the tank and then is is therefore pumped and that gets pumped over into what we call the gray water unit and the gray water unit takes anything from the showers the kitchen sinks the dishwasher the laundry of facilities all gets pumped into the gray water tank. One of the questions that we get often get asked is is there is there odor is there a smell in the house is there you know do you have bugs in the house do the worms get out etc etc the the worms that we have in the tank are considered texas wigglers or texas red worms and now they don't escape the tank system actually at times you can see them in there it's a highlight of the kids when they get a chance to see the worms inside the tank. Twice a year I have to go through and pump off the the sludge or the settlements off the the gray water tank and that's that's usually done in the same time that I I do the cleaning of the compost tank or taking compost out and then somewhere during the six months later I would take out and and pump off on a month by month basis we have a usually a filtering screen within our gray water tank that I I need to take out and clean it out wash down the the inside of the the gray water tank just kind of clean it up make sure everything is is working fine in there actually it has its advantages I can pour grease right down the toilet from your frying pan throw we can throw Kleenexes and well of course Kleenexes but your paper toweling any paper product go down there anything biodegradable can go in the system generally they want it to go through the disposal first so it gets ground up but it makes it so convenient well welcome back and I get to introduce our new guest Barb McCarthy from the University of Minnesota natural research resources research institute up in Duluth welcome Barb it was interesting as I looked at those four different alternatives or four different sites it was interesting that they ended up with four different choices because of the problems they got to deal with the first site they got to deal with high water table and heavy soils so the site helped them to move towards a solution that the second site also again was a high water table situation and the last site was just trying some new ideas along with some bedrocks is bedrock as a problem but the sites gave kind of the what they needed to work with to end up then choosing a technology to make sure that they got treatment right and that's I think common across the board with each of the systems here is that they do come provide a comparable level level of treatment as a standard system does also important as part of the this piece is that several of the system several of the sites have used technologies that where they can use pretreatment systems to actually retrofit where they can use the existing soil dispersal part so that's a good use of the technology as well and tying in then that that retrofit is also the need for management it was interesting jack's comment there at the end that it's a simple system and I think that simple is is a good term for that choice but it still needs to be managed that is the recirculating filter is going to need to be operated and made sure that the performance is doing what it needs to so that the treatment takes place at that site other options had different levels of management that they would need from a semi annual visit on an aerobic tank to the homeowner with the separation technology talking about a monthly activity that they needed to do on their system to make sure it was operating and working the way it's supposed to and working the way it's supposed to meant that it was going to have a long term operation on that site and I think lastly across all of the projects education is key a critical component I think everybody learned a lot from the homeowner trying to make the choice of which system to use to the county who have to permit the system and then eventually the homeowner has to understand how the system is used and how to take care of it across the board so great thanks Dave and bar again just a reminder if you have a call a question that you'd like to have us answer at the end of the night you can call in or fax in that question and the numbers for that are one eight hundred six five seven three six seven seven for phone or one eight hundred six five seven three six seven eight for the fax we're going to look at another scenario here another special situation in minnesota we have a lot of lakes and rivers and there are some special issues or special problems around in those shoreland areas the water table is high a lot of times the lots are very small and the developments are older and also those houses or cabins may get real intensive use during some seasons or just on weekends and that can put a real load or stress on a traditional system there are a lot of different alternatives for people living in shoreland areas and again any one of those alternatives is going to require some management some maintenance and what that management is will depend on the site characteristics and the interests of the owner a collection system might be the best solution in a shoreland area but it's not the only solution individual systems will work as well now we're going to look at some tape from four different lake areas in minnesota and you'll see the different solutions that they've chosen for those problems well before we had this in of course we all had our individual pumping system and we all had an individual sewer system and it was the sewer systems many of them around had become not compliant to the state laws because there was some of that the drain fields were too close to the lake and some of them even had pipes that were running into the lake for the drain fields and so it wasn't for a very good setup for the lake we had the motel there at on a busy weekend the motel would have many customers in us and they had a little septic tank which was not legal at all which was out of the lead and that would overflow and the water would be underneath our clothes line here and on the monday morning wife would be hanging the laundry up and having to have boots on to get out underneath them craig gilbertson of the environmental system he could see what was going on and they knew what was going on and so they worked on trying to get get this done to protect the lake the restaurant and the motel on shingabee island at that time in the early 90s 93 or 94 changed hands so we were concerned about the septic system at that time and knew it somewhat suspicious that it was a quote-unquote bad system we'd heard horror stories but hadn't proved it yet so we required the new owners which was the leech lake tribe to put in a new septic system before they started operation and as you've seen the island is very difficult to put in a standard type of system so we realized at that time that we were going to have to look at something different and the only available property for the treatment area was across the highway and that was owned by the state of minnesota so the state of minnesota was not going to let um just the reservation and the motel and restaurant use that particular piece of property unless the entire island which is an additional 14 houses and another business use that piece of property so the county board allowed me to work with the citizens out here work with the leech lake tribe and with the state of minnesota to look for a solution the system consists of 14 residential homes and two businesses one of the homes is a six unit complex each of the individual homes have their own septic tank um such things as the restaurant might have two or three septic tanks then they all go out into a main in the road where the effluent goes to a singular lift station about a 9 000 gallon lift station on this side of the highway then it's pumped across highway 371 to a wayside rest and in the middle of the wayside rest the state of minnesota has allowed us to obtain a piece of property it goes into a settling septic tank there then it is dispersed through dropboxes into gravelous trench sewage effluent has been monitored we had residential b o d's in the mid 100 so parts per million the effluent in the settling tank just from a visual standpoint is very clear i look at the drain field a couple times a year see where it is is the course of the dropboxes and how it's going through the field the daily monitoring of flows is done by bob king residents there that has just done a great job and is an integral part of the system it's just more of a visual checks now to make sure it's operating right when they first came out with the projected costs of operation it was figuring that somebody should check the the readings on the water meter once a day and and also on the sewer the pump is on there and it was projected to be a certain cost for that if somebody do that so i am i was concerned about the financial situation of the place if we'd have the money coming in would be enough to pay for our expenses or any future expense might arise so i am well i'm wrong here to do that well for a long time i went down every day and took the readings and checked and see if there was any excessive use of water which at first i didn't know first it would be excessive use because we didn't know just how much would be used but it finally settled down so you knew just about what would be a normal usage and then whenever it was come out to be extreme usage really then i know something was something wrong there was a frozen pipe or leaking or else like a flush valve on a toilet or basin would be sticking or something like that i think really it's important to me the fact is made so much easier but also an overall picture of it that it's done so much for the lake by not having this sewage pumped in which has caused problems so in many places around the country with a lot of houses around the lake when the flooding came to the lake system here that the there was no question all the or the majority of the septic systems went underwater and of course the fluents were then mixing with the lake levels and there was a real problem well i think the biggest problem that we had of course never did happen but there were people that not only were worried about the cost of the system but were worried about it wouldn't last and wouldn't work and and there was great concerns there it was new or it was newly engineered or however we'd want to say that and there was this you know concern with people system was put in on big marine lake and on the east bay which is off to our left and right here on the west side and was on the high land they acquired land up on in in two farms and they put in large holding redid all of the the soil work that was in the area and built it according to the specifications and then put in all of these duck air duct systems for drying it off and drying and getting rid of the moisture and our treatment system is owned by washington county it's managed by washington county and new scandia for the area that's in new scandia then i believe may township is involved for the area in big you know big carnaion because it's in their area and it's simple i mean if you if that lighter buzzer goes on out in your backyard you just pick up the phone and call a number and within an hour somebody will be here shut the the light off and shut the buzzer off if you happen to have a buzzer in your area and they'll have that thing back and running no time no time plan and that service is just great and that's the biggest one of the big concerns we had was will we be forgotten will this thing really go but that isn't true it really has been done well you know the concern of whether there is you know there have been any change because of the system that we install that really is not a problem at all i think the the ladies and the children and the guys enjoy the idea of being able to have showers and bathtubs and flush toilets and no problems to this at all landowners along the lake here are all located in a very narrow corridor and there's not much room between the highway and the lake and we're concerned about clear water water that is environmentally sound and of course the overall condition of the lake so one of the things we've done is we've kind of searched around how to improve our sewer systems and we were interested first of all in just upgrading our own systems and the county said no there might be some better ways so that's what we started pursuing and we started back in actually 94 so that's five years ago and it's been a slow step-by-step process and I think the most most important part of that process has been finding our way without a lot of assistance until about two years ago when the county said that we could use Craig Gilbertson the system on north 10 mile lake is a cluster system each individual property will have at least one step system which will consist of a septic tank a pump chamber with a pump and a tank filter in there and they'll be capable of pumping the effluence up to the treatment area as Jerry mentioned it's approximately half mile away each homeowner's pump is capable of bringing it that far the homeowners from the homeowner's septic tank it'll go underneath the county road then it'll hook up with a main a pressure main and be brought up to the treatment area into a septic tank there where the final treatment will be on county property and it'll be drift dispersal throughout a one and a half acre area in the middle of the woods just to add to that a little bit the force main is supposed to be some new kind of a pipe that will not freeze at three feet and the the landowners here are still have a little trepidation about that in northern minnesota it doesn't get back so we requested the engineer to add in a heat tape what's been a are we all again a cooperative effort with homeowners county township um shingaby township and shingaby township clerk paul fairbanks had been extremely vital to the project and have worked well with us and done a good job we're all learning how to approach and come to a final solution which for us was not just merely sitting down and saying okay do this it's our system and we've been advised that we're the ones that are going to be responsible for it when it gets in the project started because my septic system failed it was just a steel steel tank that went into a wet well and we went down the county to get a permit they came up and they did some borehole testing and stuff and they test for perk and also at that time they decided that um the bottom your septic system the mountain has got to be three feet above high water mark we had like a foot so it had to build it up but they said also it's a gravelly soil so um it would drain through too fast so at that point they fail us on our septic so you were at that time when the holding tank and we were um debating about going with the communal mound system being everybody on the road is the same boat and there was four of us at that time they were looking to do something so we were looking to put in a communal mound out where our experimental wetlands is and then jeff crossby came up and said that the state was actually looking for some experimental projects for alternative treatments and that's when they came up with the experimental wetlands right here where we at is an area called grand lake it's north of dilouth and we have a very high water table it's a it's traditionally a cabin area it's very typical of lake areas and this is an area where we can't use conventional systems we've actually used mounds and we had one of them sink for all things because of the organic soils and yet that was state of the art technology at the time the individual wanted to put something in and in this particular case we used actually with the cooperation of a group of homeowners we put together a project where we collected the wastewater and put it into a constructed wetland and that has worked very well it's both an example of how to do a collector system and it's also an example of how to treat wastewater with an alternative technology one of the things that we think we did do in this case is we solved a real problem as we got wastewater out of out of the lake which is essentially where it was going with minimal treatment and no matter what type of system you had it wasn't treating wastewater very well we got it out of the lake and we put it into a area that's about 700 feet away from the lake and we think we we did a better job of treating it the wetlands there also has the ability to further polish or assimilate wastewater as it leaves that so if you look at the whole environmental approach we're at background levels for we have as a group of pretty much being we've had mount systems and stuff we're a pretty conservative group as far as water usage I think as far as the nine houses involved we use less than 100 gallons a day which is not typical of a normal house so we are on the low side for water usage but I guess being on a mound people generally are so most of us have low flow water low flow toilets and low flow shower heads and faucets and stuff so we do what watch our water usage that way and being it is a normal septic tank we're just pumping the effluent out of the tank we still have to pump our septic tanks every three or four years to get rid of the solids out of the tanks and then we also in addition have a filter coming off of our holding tank into the pump chamber so that we do not take in a lot of solids out in the wetlands the things to look for in a septic is unconventional systems maybe are a better solution to the problem like ours we actually looked at maybe a communal mound system which for other people might be a good idea a worthwhile situation that's what we're going to start off with and it was a viable and it wasn't that much more expensive we're going to group a bunch of us together and then we're going to pump it that much further away from our property and then you wouldn't have the mound on there so there is actually alternatives out there that you can use they know and all they have drip irrigation systems and there is alternatives out there that actually do as good if not sometimes a better way of treating the wastewater and if you get enough people together any system is worth because I think even if we had to pay for this whole system ourselves it still would have been cheaper than if everybody would have put a mound system in by themselves well welcome back and thanks for those good discussions and those different choices I'd just like to remind you that we're looking for your thoughts and comments and questions and so if you want to fax or mail those in that would be or call those in that would be great as I looked at those different options it became clear to me that that uh community systems was one choice but also individual choices would still work on lakeshore properties we don't want you to walk away thinking that lakeshore means that I have to go uh to a different site but it is important to make sure that the site you're working with is going to work for the technologies that you're looking at also one of the things that we wanted to make sure that you understood was mounds are a real and good long-term choice even though in some of the sites that we looked at mounds didn't fit or because of soil types at the site weren't the best choice in a lot of places mounds if built and constructed properly can be a real choice for treating wastewater barb yeah and in each of these situations really with the really need to take a close look at the soil and site evaluation process really to determine if you go with an individual system or if you have to go offsite to a community type system and in each of the four projects really four different kinds of alternative systems were selected largely because of site limitations there wasn't enough room on the individual lots for an individual system because of uh distance to a lake well setbacks and so forth each of the projects I don't think would have happened without close partnership with the local units of government people like Craig Gilbertson and Jeff Crosby really helped develop the project and work with homeowners to see it through um through completion so cooperation is very important in each of these types of projects and it's interesting in terms of those kind of partnerships how it fits together not only is it partnerships in terms of the local unit of government and the homeowners but the home homeowners themselves as they get together to solve their wastewater problems along with those partnerships though Bob highlighted that fear can paralyze a project and I think that fear can come in a couple of ways one that he talked about in terms of the worried about does it work or not the other fear that Jerry mentioned was the concern about freezing and and to me that brought up a point where the people involved in the project are going to have concerns are going to have issues that need to be dealt with and they need to be dealt with up front and they need to be dealt with honestly and work through it in that case they did the little extra in terms of the design and to deal with that freezing issue or the issue of being cold the last thing that that they highlighted and I think it's critical is that Jerry said that it's going to be the homeowner's responsibility that they're going to be responsible for taking care of the system they're going to be responsible for making sure that it does operate the way it's supposed to that in the end they are responsible for their system and making it operate and treat the way it's supposed to so from that perspective it's certainly important that the owner believes in the system they've got if they don't why they're certainly not going to get there well thanks Dave and Barb for that summary of of the second of the three scenarios that my co-host Barb Lucanen laid out that this segment is dealing with the third scenario focuses on small towns and how the people in those communities can work together to come up with a solution to their wastewater problems again collection systems may be the preferred solution but it's certainly not the only solution in these two examples that you'll see the communities have made choices that fit their specific situations in the first example the community of Hillman chose to install individual mount systems which we would call then a standard solution in Spring Hill they selected a performance solution so as we look at that just let me remind you that you saw this handout earlier but don't forget to refer to this handout for more details on any of these examples that we illustrate in these scenarios I believe at that time the previous mayor Carmen Starr came to the assistant zoning administrator the water plan coordinator and questioned the possibility of doing amounts doing the grant in the city of Hillman they met several times with citizens from the village of Hillman they had a public hearing at the city they had to they needed to do some contacts in of all the people in the city and and I believe it started from that point and worked forward Mark did most of the legwork he did most of the grant writing to assist the citizens of the city officials I should say to put all the paperwork in place make all the contacts with the Minnesota Pollution Control people and submitted the grant in behalf of the city council Mark did a very good job I went to a couple of the meetings and he explained everything because yes the citizens of Hillman are there's plenty of us that are older than I am but I mean they're older but um they needed reassurance that what we were going to do was going to be the right thing and the mowing system is a right thing to do in the city I think to follow up on that a little bit can there's always a little bit of skepticism or has been a little bit of skepticism about the efficacy of the mowing system there's still some thought that the mowing system does not work and and I think this was a reassuring the fact that the city of last year put in 47 mounds they had the opportunity to communicate with any of those individuals who had systems installed actually could go out and view their their situation and see how it all fit in in and I think they were satisfied with with that particular they were satisfied with project yep with the project some people in the city of Hillman didn't have enough room just to put in their mowing system they needed to drill a new well because the wells that we some of us had were just dug wells dug wells and so in order for us to get the mowing systems we had to have drilled wells and you have to be a certain percentage of feet away from your mowing system to your well environmental issue is a real big part of it because a lot of our our city is a recycle we are a recycle city we have um where everybody is worried about what's going to happen for their children later on it is a good property value on the homes um if I were to have to go out and solicit getting a mowing system in or any kind of sewage type of a system for your home to upgrade it to help the environment I hope that somewhere along the way that all people will put them in a good piece of advice for the citizens of a community such as Hillman here is to have the city officials bring all the citizens together in a community meeting explained very accurately very thoroughly the advantages of the program that if they wish to go into the grant program some of the advantages that are going to could happen to their property the increased property value situation I would like to um send out some advice to uh area cities if they are in a situation of uh Hillman had where they were pumping their sewers and not knowing where it was ending up or what was happening to it in the upcoming years I would um tell them to go to their area um government center and go to see who could start them off or keep going you have to you have to keep following through with what you start with in order to make sure you can find out what you want Spring Hill is mainly a farming community we have like 72 people that live in the community it's made up of 40 units it is a dairy area there's a lot of farming it's a farming community in our town we have two two bars a store and a garage that's the businesses in our small community it started off the county came in and they were going to redo the road and the county had asked about the sewage or sewer system in our town and they found out that it was not in compliance and they found out it ran to a creek in our area the sewage water went to the creek so in 1997 is when I took office is as a city mayor and we worked right away with the county and the minnesota pollution control and the state and the federal government and to see what we could do to get some funding to help us to start our project I think the first one was the gem project which stands for Greenwald or Rosa Meyer Grove they have a lagoon system and it's a it's located maybe eight miles from our city and we thought you know instead of doing something else we could just hook up with them but that was very costly so that was and they didn't have the room for us too so that was you know they would have to expand their lagoon system in order for us to work then we thought of aerobic there's an aerobic system but that was very high maintenance so we didn't care for that then there were was the mounds that our lots are all pretty narrow and small so that didn't seem real feasible neither for our area so another object was the wetland another alternative for us why we like the wetland is because there will be no standing water and it'll look more like nature because wildflowers will be planted and we'll plant trees along the site the county of Stearns County has been very helpful through this whole project from day one they have come to meetings they've done they've been at the site but working they've answered questions throughout the community they've helped us every day Karen has been here as far as what the once of wetland started and seeing what they were doing she has made sure that all the specifications have been met if they were unsure she got the the pamphlet out and made sure that they seen what what was to be done so Karen has really been our eyes for us the city of spring hill is installing two six thousand gallon septic tanks with two wetland cells for the constructed wetland cell treatment and then it'll be disposed of in five different zones for drip irrigation the county is going to be involved with the system on an ongoing basis first of all since we are the permitting authority there will be annual reports submitted and the permit will be renewed every five years through the county the operation and maintenance of the system basically is going to involve checking the sludge in the septic tanks to determine when and how often they'll be need to be pumped second of all there'll be a flow meter and so they'll be need to be measuring the flows to ensure that they're staying under that ten thousand gallons per day there'll be a number of pumps that dough in the dosing tank that they'll just have to kind of watch to make sure that they're they're performing okay and then to do any visual inspections making sure that we don't have any you know surface discharge that the wetlands aren't ponding because obviously there's not going to be any surface water it'll all be subsurface and from there basically they should be on their own the best advice i could give other another county that would be undertaking this type of project would be first to be involved with the community from the very beginning to encourage that community to make sure that it is a community decision and that everybody is up to key as to what's going on with the project then to educate yourself you know and to really just stay involved with it from the very beginning to the very end because i found it very um educational and learned a lot through this project and then to also not forget about it you know to follow up afterwards and be able to make some determinations on future projects based on past experience so in this segment really taking a look at some of the options for small community systems in both the hillman and the spring hill projects they really took a look at their options i did a close evaluation to determine which type of system could be used with hillman basically it was the individual mounds that were the most cost effective and best type of system because they had room on their individual lots versus spring hill where they looked at options but the lots were small and basically chose a wetland drip system was also interesting in terms of both of those options or both of those projects how they started out in the case of hillman it started out because the city identified a problem and then they went to get some assistance or some help from their local unit of government on the other side the local unit of government came in and asked some questions and then through an educational process they ended up saying as a community that we need to move forward but in both cases the community kept the ball rolling and i think that's a that's an important point that without someone pushing in particular without local people keeping the ball rolling things are not going to happen the way they're supposed to the other thing that that both groups identified as critical was communication i liked in the in the city of hillman how the communication was with each other but also that they went to other communities that had already been successful and with that extra step or with that information gathering done being done they could come back and and say that this is the way that they as a community could go forward the communication also went back and forth with the regulators and i appreciated the local regulators comments that how important education was uh in the process and i think the uh the last point that i like to make is something that karen said it's uh basically you know don't forget about the system and i think that's true with both of the projects here either with the individual standard system or the community type of system we they do have to pay attention to it does have to be operated and maintained and that uh follow-up is needed for both of them and that's something that the state of minnesota is doing through the research program that was established here uh several years ago where we're trying to evaluate the use of some of these systems in our cold climates and then to get that information out to the the general public just like you're not supposed to forget about the system we don't want to forget about you so could you please uh fax and phone in your comments and those of you that are trying to mail the zip code here is five five one five five this teasing but we're also going to take just a short break now to give us time to put those together and to uh maybe come back with some uh different ideas or new thoughts so we'll be see you in just a couple minutes we're what we've just finished doing i just remind you that we just got through the three scenarios and that these situations were real people solving some real problems that they had out there that's right but they looked at their conditions and picked the system that was right for them whether it was individual systems or collection systems alternative or standard traditional systems they considered the site conditions the cost what management would be required um and also their desire to protect the environment as they made the choices that fit their situation well and so that raises the possibility that now we could start to develop some areas that weren't considered suitable for onsite treatment systems before uh if we start to do that is that good uh no not really land use development should not be solely based on placement of onsite septic systems um it should be more of a component of land use development onsite placement uh specifically you can't downsize lots just because of the type of sewer system that you're putting in if you do some of those things you could create more problems so you want to watch that and another problem that you could create is some of these new systems need new levels of management what i mean by that is up to this point in minnesota our standard systems have used the soil as a treatment mechanism and this and choosing the soil meant that i was choosing a system that we felt very confident in terms of its treatment now if i'm going to go to a different system i'm going to need to monitor to make sure that that treatment is taking place it isn't a change that the treatment is there in a standard system it's just now i'm verifying it uh in the performance system because of some of the tools i'm using now this new management requirement means that i'm going to need a new level of oversight or some type of uh management entity that's saying care of it in the videos we saw a couple different ones like uh city or in individual in the case of the separation technology or that the final thing would be some of the the homeowner groups that have gotten together in terms of that management the caution that i would say is that without the management entity in place go slow with the new technologies because the management is going to be critical to make them work otherwise you're going to end up with lots of problems where these new technologies aren't working the way they're supposed to in addition to that i'd like to add that it's essential in this management that a partnership develops as we talk about partnerships uh there should be a partnership with the local agencies with the homeowners and the state agencies um it's essential that these management partnerships develop if you want to make sure that the systems are working uh the local agencies can provide the options for the homeowners and the state agencies can help also provide additional education and technical advice uh to the management one of the other partnerships uh that people are interested in is the cost and uh that might be a place where partnership can develop in terms of cost uh working out how it gets paid when we look at costs i i do want to highlight that in your handout packet is a um guide that we put together to look and talk a little about costs but more importantly than the dollar amounts is some of the issues that are related to costs that is that cost includes if i don't have a good system that is if i don't treat the waste water my impacts or or my environmental or even public health issues have a cost associated with it so treatment can be less expensive because i avoid problems down the road the other cost that people think about is what is going to cost out of my pocket and um that's an important piece it for at least for all us Scandinavians and the part there though is that the capital cost and the management cost needs to be included that in some of these systems the capital cost may be very small but the management cost may be very big i guess the example that comes to mind is a holding tank that that is a low capital cost but to take care of it to pump and haul could be an extreme expense and over the life of that system that could be the the big part of the cost cost is one of the pieces in terms of the decision but there's other criteria that goes in there as well and those are kind of laid out in that sheet talking about appearance uh landscaping opportunities homeowner acceptance all of those are going to be issues that fall into this decision making matrix that's going to make the choices uh what they are okay thanks uh i i guess if i were to paraphrase what i heard you say it's something about don't make bad land use decisions just because we now can use alternatives and we have to look at a whole package in order to make that kind of a decision well that kind of puts a wrap up on the second part of this session uh and so now we're into we've been receiving questions uh all evening and we're ready to start the process of answering them so we've got all of our experts out here here with Barb and I in the library portion of us are Craig Gilbertson and Dave Gustafson I'd remind you again and over at the news desk we've got uh Barb McCarthy and Mark Westphal uh and they'll all be responding to questions so Barb why don't you uh fire off with the first question great we've got a couple questions here about filters one from Grand Rapids Minnesota and one from peace county and I'm not sure what state that's in but um how important are effluent filters and what are the advantages of those and could you talk a little bit more about filters and tanks or what other filters exist Dave do you want to talk about filters and first off what is a effluent filter or the term that we're using is screen because that's kind of its function it's a device put in at the outlet end of the septic tank that will screen the water before it goes out of the septic tank the goal of those is to keep the solids or the chunks which is the function of the septic tank in the in the septic tank the advantage is just that that it removes the solids it keeps them in there but also the advantage at least in my mind is that it forces maintenance that is that it helps us to remember to go out and take care of that or or it makes it happen now maintenance in those cases are cleaning the screen and then pumping the tank that's kind of a two-step piece I also like to remind people that use those here in Minnesota that it's a good idea to have an alarm when they put the screen because if I don't take care of it and I have backups at our house an alarm goes off named Nancy and Nancy is extremely expensive to reset so it's important that you know about that before but that's where that management piece that is the alarm then is a piece of my management system are they worthwhile my answer is anything that helps protect the downstream things is going to be a has a positive effect on the system and I just like to add to that they're very cost effective as Dave talked earlier about costs a filter in the tank is relatively unexpected less than a hundred dollars generally speaking okay for the next question now Barb McCarthy I'm going to throw this one at you wetland systems what determines when they are lined or unlined and this one comes from shesago county here in Minnesota um well I've been involved in a number of wetland treatment systems and pretty much all the all the systems of wetlands that we've been involved with our research site and some of the demonstration projects in the northern part of the state they've all been lined wetland systems so typically use uh you know an impermeable liner to line it and put your rock in and put your plants in and so forth what you do with the water that's a another question as far as the dispersal you can go into a an upgrade system you could go to a trench system you could go to a drip system as we've seen in some of the tapes so typically the wetland cell is is a line type of system well let me come back with a another wetland related question and this one Dave I'll throw at you our specific soaps and detergents bad for wetlands and this one comes from Duluth well I think in terms of a wetland system because you're growing the plants any kind of a toxic material would be bad I don't necessarily see that any of the soaps are toxic other than the soaps that have bleach as an additive maybe something that you would want to minimize that is that you wouldn't want to use it all the time so I'm not adding bleach but wetland specific I don't think that there's any soap chemicals or soap that's bad now you'll remember in the example that the owner of the Grand Lake talked about chemicals and he was talking more about uh hazardous waste and cleaning chemicals that would have that a toxic effect on the plants Dave maybe you could also point out and talk a little bit about liquid soaps versus powder soaps um there's always been some questions about that also well when you're looking at soaps in general uh first off we like to highlight that you use the right amount that if you're not using the right amount of soap you cause problems and in Minnesota some of the research that we found was Minnesotans could measure liquid detergent better than powders so and I think it's a function of ease and a function of cost the other thing though that that that comes up and and um is something that people think about is is what do they put in as an additive that soap is made up of soap and something to be called a filler in a liquid soap that filler is water and we know that that doesn't cause problems with the system so in general that's kind of where we look at or walk through the soap uh issue great I have a question here that uh for you Mark uh talking about how we monitor standard systems and what are the results of what we're seeing coming out of standard systems maybe in comparison with performance systems looking at BOD and total suspended solids and fecal coliform uh yes barba we really do not monitor standard systems for BOD total suspended solids or for fecals uh the reason we don't is because we have lots and lots of literature and lots lots of research showing what the performance of a standard system is for septic tank the BOD coming out of septic tank is about 175 the total suspended solids are about 65 and the fecals are about a million fecals per 100 milliliters of solution so we know that's what the septic tank does again there's lots of research based on that there's also all research talking about the soil and how that performs the soil basically after straining the sewage through three feet of soil coming from the septic tank basically we see our total removal of BOD our total removal of suspended solids and basically a total removal of fecal organisms of all three of those so we're really confident through based on lots and lots of research that started back in the 1930s maybe even before that that standard systems provide excellent treatment for us great thanks mark we have three similar questions and they've all come in from minnesota so maybe we here in minnesota are thinking ahead to winter these all have to do with cold climates um and in cold i'm going to throw this one to you bar because they're a couple about wetlands in cold climates with seasonal or intermittent use of homes is there a problem with freezing of the constructed wetlands or drain fields um that are fed by a drip system and again a concern from lake shore owners who are concerned about whether those those alternative systems are adaptable for just system seasonal use or do they need to be winterized well i don't have a lot of experience with uh seasonal wetlands and a drip system but we do have experience with wetland systems in the northern part of the state and basically our experience with them is if they are adequately insulated through the use of the existing plant material that's there through the addition of a mulch either a plant mulch or some type of peat soil mixture mulch by creating an air gap in there and creating an ice layer and then dropping the water level on the wetland those are all ways to basically provide insulation for the wetland because that water does remain in the system for quite a few days and it does get rather cool in the in the winter up here in minnesota um at grand lake where we saw in the earlier in the in the program um that basically it's on nine homes uh during the during the summer months but in the winter months there's a lot of snowbirds and so the the use does drop down and although we have some freezing near the surface the wetland system um has not froze at our research site at the northeast regional correctional facility in diluth we have replicated wetland treatment systems these are all subsurface flow where the wastewater remains below the top of the rock um over four years of operation last winter was our first winter where we did have some significant freezing in one of the wetlands part of it because we dropped our flows way down to 40 percent of the design we had no snow cover and we didn't do a good job of insulation so it taught us a good lesson there in that in that application we probably should have dropped the water level to get that air gap in there so with wetland systems there is maintenance involved making sure the plants are growing and also as we approach the winter to ensure that it is insulated properly okay thanks barb craig i'm going to throw this one at you are the rural electric power companies involved in the management of on-site systems in minnesota and this question came out of morgentown west virginia that's an interesting question fred because they are starting to get involved there have been a few co-ops in my area that are actually doing some management of some collection systems and i recently attended a meeting where other co-ops across the state were looking at how they could get involved in on-site systems collection systems individual homeowner systems and what kind of a role that they could play and i think it's going to be a very interesting territory that we go to in the future with rural co-ops helping develop systems and management of systems in the future craig could you just lay out exactly what their involvement is in the two examples or the examples that where they're doing it right now what when we say that they're managing what what is that co-op doing basically they're doing the routine what we call as you know routine maintenance they're going out periodically checking the systems checking the tanks looking where the solid levels are checking the pumps making sure that they're working things of that nature that should be done on a regular basis for a system and they charge that then to the homeowners on this collection system they're also available if there's problems right i mean yes they get they're the ones that get the car they receive some training i believe through your programs that you do through the state day and that just in the videos too it talked to bob talked about that the scandia site and that there is a sanitary district that oversees it so it's a little different but the thing that was important is both of those places have someone that they call if they're having problems and i think that's you know that's an important piece for homeowners at least you know that they have that contact that to deal with stuff yeah i think it can really develop in the future i think there's a really opportunity for our rural electric co-ops to get involved with onsite and it's it's exciting okay thanks uh mark wasp at all i'm going to throw this one at you another question from morgan town west virginia our nsf class one aerobic systems approved for surface discharge in the state of minnesota they are not through our program here if you wanted to go to a service discharge from individual home that would be allowed in the state but you have to go through a federal permitted process and right now at the state level we do not have a good regulatory scheme to permit an individual home with an individual service discharge uh we do classify nsf systems that are approved through nsf as a standard aerobic tank in minnesota but that discharge has to go to a cell treatment unit just like it would for a regular septic tank system okay thanks mark and uh barb mccarthy uh using the wetland system in your cold climate how much of a water quality change do you see in b o d t s s and nitrogen reductions from winter to summer do we know that well i don't have it uh all at the my fingertips here but uh i know typically in the the wetland treatment systems that we've been um dealing with over the last four years we do see a reduction in performance uh during the colder months of the year uh that would be um there's actually a little bit of a lag um our coldest effluence are typically would be in uh january february and march um those would be the coldest times those would be when our performance would decrease um generally speaking though the wetlands can meet secondary standards um for t s s b o d and and fecals um except for the the three or four months of the year where the where the uh it's really cold so that's where we really rely on the soil dispersal component to complete that um our research at grand lake and nirk for nitrogen removal um during the first three uh years we actually had some pretty good nitrogen removal rates but we're finding uh as time goes on that that um nitrogen uh removal is decreasing um for example at grand lake another thing that we have to look at is is not just the concentration but actually the the mass removal rates um in the summer uh mass removal rates would would be um approaching 70 80 percent on some of the wetland systems and that would would decrease during the winter months also there's in their packets they got a handout on terms of the research sites both at lake washington and at the nirk site so there's some data there that they can look at and if they have more specific questions um that uh that would be they could contact us and in terms of more specific results from those research projects great thanks so you didn't have much at the tip of your tongue but i think that was pretty good information um i could to two sort of short questions for you dav i'm going to give them to you both at the same time would antibacterial soaps harm the bacteria in a sewage treatment system and then where does recirculating sand filter effluent go and how often is it recirculated um those are two short questions but different applications right so the first one not antibacterial soaps um my my short answer is it's going to have some impact and it's a function of how much antibacterial soap in terms of how much of an impact uh there are contractors working here in minnesota that that it's a major concern and they've run into situations and and tied it back to a lot of antibacterial soap use as a a piece of the problem in terms of a failing system um normal use at one or two sinks is probably not a big deal lots of use would fall into the problem would fall into a problem category uh now jumping to recirculating uh sand filters um our designs we're looking at recirculating five times the straight the forward flow so for example the the home that we looked at used about 400 gallons a day we designed the sand filter then at a loading rate of 2000 bringing that 400 gallons back through that system five times so that's kind of our loading rates that we're looking at okay and where does that effluent go when it leaves the sand from where does it go it goes into a soil dispersal uh system and the example that we had on the video at line of lakes they had approximately 18 inches of soil that it goes into um the the thing that that was interesting and we probably didn't talk about that much in line of lakes is that that system was also failing to the surface and the the pretreatment device has retrofitted that so so now that system is operating again uh subsurface the way it's supposed to so that the pretreated effluent has made that system return to its the mode of operation that that it was designed for right so those performance systems include the pretreatment unit and the soil dispersal system yeah and and i think that's a that's an important part um as we look forward in terms of the stuff that we're talking about subsurface disposal gives you a little bit of extra risk protection because you're not you don't have that potential direct connection and so you know uh the question was asked earlier mark do we allow surface disposal uh of of treated discharge of treated effluent and the answer is not in this program in a different program and and personally i like keeping it in the ground because i think there's some advantages that way great craig here's a question for you for a local our local government representative from pequot lakes do counties set their own schedules for freeze for fees and permit not often for free i know for fees and permits uh yes they do throughout in minnesota anyway they set their own fees um based on their own budgets um in cast county which i'm more familiar with we set fees for homeowners we set commercial fees uh the commercial fees are based on flows and then we also set fees for our community systems that are based on both the number of homes and the flow of the system a new thing to cast county that we are looking at is operating permits uh we now require operating permits for commercial establishments and we do require a renewal fee on the operating permits i think that's a great comment that the performance and some of the commercial establishments are going to need a little bit more uh county and regulatory involvement so you need to have a different fee structure for those so that so that that cost is is real realized and it doesn't become a burden because i can see uh local unions the government just getting burnt out by some of these management things and so that those some of those extra fees should help with staffing and some of those issues and it goes back to dave that though all we talked about tonight management and the county's not there looking to be the big hammer that they got to get this permit and get this permit again but we're there to try to act as consultants to help them to get the most life out of the systems that they're putting in the ground great okay thanks uh i've got two questions here now from indiana and the first one i'm pretty sure is a ringer uh it's from west something and it says do you think your golfers have a chance against our boiler makers on saturday uh the second one uh also comes from indiana and mark i would address this one to you uh this is community systems uh in the time during which they're planning them uh as to how they deal with the problem uh what do they do in that in that interim period uh if they've got a serious problem okay currently now for if we are planning with a city currently we do not really take any enforcement action against that city while they're in the planning process um if they are somewhat reluctant to uh do the planning process we may use some enforcement action against them i don't think we ever have done any enforcement action against the small community with a bad discharge in the past and because basically most of the times the communities recognize their problems they know it's a problem having this untreated sewage out on the ground surface going to a stream or a lake and so when we approach them about the problem they usually have been fairly cooperative and then fixing the problem so we do not give them any sort of interim limits or anything of that nature we just kind of work with them and the surface discharge allows to be continued until that the system is online okay thanks uh the next one is from carthage Missouri and it says how large are the mound systems being used in minnesota specifically for single family homes and they have you when we look at mound design or sizing there's two pieces the the rock bed is is sized based on the flow from the house so for a typical three bedroom house the rock bed for a mound is 10 by 40 the footprint then is the rock bed and the area i need for it to soak in so depending on the soil at the site that's going to be uh more or less if i'm on a heavy clay soil that absorption area for a 10-foot wide rock bed is 50 feet so that i end up with a relatively large footprint for a different soil you know a more coarse soil a sandy loam or a sand that absorption area becomes less the thing that i like to comment to people though is that if i'm not careful it can become ugly looking and so that one of the things that we're looking at now is you know part the mound is also to landscape it in and landscaping to avoid water standing behind it landscaping just so that it's not so bad in the video that we were watching we saw a nice flower garden that was actually a landscape mound system so uh some of the sizing is going to relate to the site and those kind of things but the thing i wanted to highlight is two pieces the rock bed for the flow the absorption area for the soil that you're dealing with okay now i've got several here that deal with costs in some way uh piquant lakes more discussion about system costs maintenance costs monitoring costs and i don't know if they're referring to one of the uh handouts here's another one from demoyne cost o and m cost does o and m include debt service costs let me deal with that one right up front and in our handout the o and m does not include any debts debt service stuff that the our estimated o and m costs were for taking care of it which included uh monitoring and that would include maybe sampling or at least visiting the site so we added costs for that and then pumping costs the other thing i mean this kind of a comment on costs is it's costs are very a site specific um we were involved in a system here in minnesota where it was extremely expensive because they were going to do some um tunneling through bedrock so that's going to increase the cost uh the other the other part of cost is that you know labor costs are going to be different material costs are going to be different i know up in diluth it can become extremely expensive for hauling materials so what happens then is is that a material um a high user of material system isn't the best choice and so that some of these other alternatives jump up as a as a choice because of material availability so cost is is really specific to the area at least the capital the construction costs and in in addition to that i just like to add that uh costs also may be in how much the homeowners or the owners of the system want to become involved uh some of the systems that i work with it's it's different um the one showed tonight shingabye island the homeowners do a great job of going out and looking at that system they are really involved in that system they monitor it on a regular basis um whereas some other systems that i have uh or deal with um have hired outside consultants to look at them one has hired a um cooperative talked about and uh another system going in that was shown tonight was uh north 10 mile they are going out for bids and looking for a professional maintenance company to do their maintenance so obviously again it's going to be that will affect the level of cost okay when you're talking about uh some outside uh firm dealing with these costs i think that relates very well to this series of questions on here okay of these systems that require ongoing maintenance how does the homeowner pay that cost quarterly by annually annually if an outside firm is doing it what's the range of cost for maintenance on some of these systems standard or alternative and the last one is what is the homeowner's view on these costs positive or negative well every homeowner's excited to spend lots of money on sewage i mean but let me just say the one thing i mean to put it in perspective of a standard system that we're talking about a pumping uh uh uh regiment of once every three years that that we're talking about in minnesota a typical investment of between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars for that for that maintenance so if we go no for the three years of that of that management cycle so if you divide that out that's a fifty dollar investment a year it's typically paid every three years when you have that that system pumped i think that the the electrical things they're actually doing the costs add on a monthly i mean that you pay uh that's what they're doing charge um shingabee island they do it on a quarterly charge um it was a good question before brought out about capital costs and recovery knows um that also needs to be figured into those costs as far as the homeowners when they're going to pay that final bill um and again that's done she can be honest quarterly um 10 mile lake they're looking at because they dealt with the township in the county they're looking at it doing semi annually um through their taxes so they will be paying that uh to the county great barb here's a three wetland questions for you all sort of related one from douglas county here in minnesota information on how to build a constructed wetland and um one from warwick city indiana are we familiar with the living wetlands that nasa did research on and if not have we done similar research on living wetlands compared to the rock base and what's your opinion about those and then here's a little more specific one to add in there about how well did the wetlands clean the effluent and remove heavy metals okay the answer to the third question um we haven't done any uh the the systems that we've been involved with we haven't done any uh any tests looking at heavy metal removal so i really can't answer that i know that they've been using wetlands for landfill leachate um somewhere in minnesota in the twin cities area and so i think that there is some information on that and the uh what was the first question um what how are wetlands constructed oh a general description of wetland construction okay the actual assembly process would include uh providing an excavation an area for a basin basically similar to a a pond system with a fairly flat bottom and three to one side slope so they're not too steep getting that fairly level and smooth putting an impermeable liner down um having a pipe that would convey wastewater into the wetland from the septic tank that would be septic tank effluent typically it's a a force main that would be directed into the wetland with a header pipe across it to spread the wastewater across the wetland at the at the beginning of it um there is also a pipe put at the end of the wetland to take that water out of the wetland to your soil dispersal um system it's filled with p rock 18 inches of p rock is our typical uh construction we then planted the plants we've used cat cattails bull rushes and reeds um i know other folks in minnesota have tried aeration systems in as a way to bring oxygen into the system uh during the colder months of the year there are all other other wetlands where they've actually put more of a soil component at the top of uh at the top of the wetland and that would basically complete the uh the wetland system um i'm actually not the wetland specialist at nri uh there's another group uh working on it so i don't have a lot of knowledge about the the nasa system so great thanks for mark here's one for you do the state shoreline regulations require two sites for all lots and is that wave for collector collector or centralized systems okay the requirement uh is not just to ensure that the requirement is statewide the state rules governing septic systems indicate or specify should say that all sites uh planted uh now today would have to require two uh sites for individual sewage treatment systems and we're also going to require that those sites could support a standard system uh they don't have to put in the standard system first but uh the rules require that to solve the quality be well enough that at least you can put in a two standard systems if you know things should go wrong with you alternative or experimental uh type system and what was the second part of that question there barb uh is that uh is that requirement for two sites waived for when they have a collector centralized system yeah if they're going to go directly to a centralized system then uh basically you do not need to have that two site requirement that if you're going to design a subdivision to go with a collector system and go to sewer or something of that nature that two site requirement would be waived craig here's one for you this is the question one of those money questions um that we knew would come have uh has any funding been established for i s t s or retrofitting existing systems and one from iowa about can you explain anything about the various grants or other funding programs available so you may not know specifically in iowa but you might have a sense from a local perspective yes there there are is a lot of funding agencies out there and i think we could have a whole two hour session on just funding and trying to obtain funding um some of the funding that i have used in minnesota is um through the public facilities authority through the minnesota pollution control agency um i've used some funding that has been obtained through epa i've used some funding that's been um filtered down through hud through the department trading economic development um again it's you just got to go out there and be aggressive and try to find all the sources of funding great and here's a question asking for clarification maybe barb you can explain this on the system that bob mosta described in osakus how was the soil treatment accomplished they thought that it seemed like it was just added on to where there was a failed drain field could you explain that more well i think with that system way i understood although i wasn't directly involved with that it's an aerobic treatment tank um followed by a drip system that was installed so the aerobic treatment tank would provide a certain level of treatment many of the systems go through a testing program and they're certified for removing a b o d and t s s and i believe that the system that they used in that application would be considered like a class one um effluent and uh typically with that type of system you might see uh 30 30 or somewhere in that range for b o d t s s and you get a significant fecal reduction you probably still have several thousand fecals left uh or less and so your final treatment then occurs in the soil it's distributed through a drip system where you apply a fairly small amount of wastewater to the soil it's dosed into the soil so it's dosed and you it provides for um aeration of the soil um after it's uh dosed and dosed and rested for some period of time okay next we've got uh some questions regarding mound systems and problems or failure problems with mound systems why do they fail uh what can be done to prevent them failing what's done to fix them uh our alternatives the answer uh that whole range dave would you uh when you look at mound systems and their failures they typically break into two big things one is a mistake in terms of design and so we talked about all systems that we need to do good site evaluation to deal with it the other problem is typically construction materials so i need to choose the right materials um so good design good construction are the keys to making them work can we fix them in certain cases yes our alternatives the answer i say do stuff right the first time then you don't have to worry about alternatives but but that may be a piece of the answer in certain places that i uh i go out and talk to a lot of county planning and zoning administrators and i asked them specifically what is your failure rate on mound systems the numbers i consistently get back from the planning and zoning people has a failure a failure rate between one and three percent for mound systems and dave and i've been out on a number of those failed mounds that have broke and we find again it's a it's basically a materials problem a construction problem or sometimes it's a siding problem it's basically on really really poor soils but actually our success rate on mounds is very very high great well we had a lot of good questions tonight we didn't get through quite all of them but we tried to get to many around minnesota and from other states we want to thank you very much for joining us this evening and again we want to ask you to fill out your evaluation forms or as evaluation for each participant at the site as well as one form for the coordinator to fill out there was also some information in your packets about additional materials that you could order there are fact sheets and there's a homeowner's manual one of the questions we didn't get to was how often should your tank be pumped and this manual will help you figure that out for your site so you can order those with information that's in the packet also if you're want to get those continuing education credits you need to get registered with your site coordinator red okay and i'd say thanks again to the planning committee all of the experts who joined us live here in the studio the folks who allowed us to film of their properties and or interview them on camera and to all of you out there who served as site coordinators special thanks to cindy mosberg who coordinated the signups and mailing to sherry haze who did the filming and editing and ken olson who did the entire effort good evening and have a great day tomorrow