 The Commonwealth of Virginia is a treasure house of many different natural resources, rolling landscapes, thick forest land, prime agricultural land, sunny beaches, diverse wildlife, and the Chesapeake Bay are just a few of her precious holdings. Virginia citizens are fast learning that keeping nature's resources healthy for today and tomorrow is of primary importance. Natural resources must be protected from man's misuses, neglect, and contamination. This requires thoughtful management and protection for nature's sake as well as ours. A vital Virginia resource in danger of mismanagement today is your hidden store of groundwater. It is in danger because of inadequate regulations for residential septic systems. This video presentation will explain the problem and then show you what can be done to solve it. Water is water beneath the earth's surface that supplies wells and springs. Each day we use water that has at one time or another traveled this underground network. When many of us consider the avenues groundwater travels, we have visions of Luray Cavern's mysterious underground lakes and rivers. While this is a common understanding, it is not entirely accurate. Surprisingly, most groundwater travels an average of only three inches a day, slowly seeping through microscopic soil paths, it fills vacant spaces around soil particles. Below the soil, water travels through fractures and underlying rock layers. Gravity's pull continually draws it further and further downstream to springs, streams, rivers, and the bay. Groundwater is an integral part of each day for people, animals, and plants. It provides over 90% of the world's drinkable water. Closer to home, 80% of Virginia's total population depends upon groundwater for their daily needs. Man's actions on the surface of the land have many far-reaching effects below the surface. Researchers are continuously uncovering ways activity on the earth's surface affects water quality beneath the surface. One type of pollution that comes from activity on and beneath the earth's surface is non-point source pollution. This is pollution that cannot be traced to a single source. Instead, pollutants are carried from the land to streams, rivers, and lakes each time it rains. Non-point source pollution includes viruses and bacteria, excess nutrients, pesticides, sediment, heavy metals, and toxic substances. As much as 60% of the pollution affecting state waters in the Chesapeake Bay today is non-point source pollution. A significant contributor to non-point source pollution is the common septic tank drain field system. There are 650,000 septic tank drain field systems in Virginia, discharging over 200 million gallons of wastewater daily. Effectively used, conventional septic tank systems provide beneficial wastewater treatment. A typical household septic system is made up of four parts. The septic tank, the distribution box, the drain field, and the soil beneath and around the drain field area. Wastewater treatment begins in the septic tank where solids and liquids are separated. Bacteria in the septic tank convert most of the solids into liquids. After this, pipes from the septic tank pass the liquid wastes out. As the wastewater leaves the septic tank, it is directed to a distribution box which splits the flow among a series of drainage pipes. These pipes have many small holes which allow wastewater to trickle into an area of gravel, trenches, and soil called the drain field. As the wastewater travels through the soil beneath the drain field, it is filtered by the soil and cleansed by naturally occurring microorganisms and bacteria. This soil filter serves to cleanse harmful bacteria and viruses from sewage water before it is deposited into or near a groundwater table. These cleansed waters supply a portion of the freshwater that recharges groundwater supplies. When polluted waters from a drain field are not cleansed by traveling a sufficient distance in well-drained soils, the threat of contaminating fresh groundwater supplies becomes a certainty. When sewage gets into Virginia's groundwater, many disease-causing bacteria and viruses are sent into community water supplies, springs, and into streams, rivers, lakes, and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. These sewage-born contaminants include polio, hepatitis, cholera, and typhoid fever. Americans today consider these illnesses of days past or problems found only in underdeveloped countries. And yet, just as these and many other illnesses were passed along and contracted through polluted water supplies years ago, given the opportunity, they will travel the same path today. The improper treatment of human waste can result in the transmission through contaminated water of well over 50 diseases. It wasn't until early in this century with the discovery of microorganisms and the discovery that they were the causative agents of these diseases that it was realized that these illnesses could be avoided by the proper treatment of human wastes. In the developed countries of the world, around the era of World War II, nationwide campaigns to properly treat and dispose of human wastes were initiated. This has reduced the large-scale outbreaks of these diseases, but not eliminated them. Virginia's current on-site residential septic system regulations were adopted in 1982. At the time these regulations were adopted, the Virginia Department of Health was charged with the primary goal of protecting public health. Disposal of sewage was the objective. Treating on-site residential wastewater before disposing of it was not yet a focus. Deputy Commissioner Robert Strube on the changing rule of the Health Department regarding on-site wastewater management. Our mission has been expanded in recent years in 1999. The General Assembly gave us the assignment of protecting groundwater and surface water as well as protecting public health. What we want to do now is not just dispose of it. We also want to treat it before it reaches the other water supplies on it, either groundwater or surface water. So the mission has been evolving from just disposing it, getting off the surface to actually treating it so that it replenishes surface water and groundwater in a safe manner. Research has determined that significant treatment of wastewater occurs in the unsaturated soil below the drain field trench and above the water table. This area is called the separation distance. Virginia's current regulations provide for a sliding-scale separation distance, ranging from 2 to 20 inches depending on soil texture. If the Health Department's expanding mission is to provide for treatment as well as disposal, are the current regulations adequate? Well, the existing standards are adequate for disposing of sewage to get it off the ground, but they're not adequate for treating it. We're becoming more concerned about the quality of the groundwater and the closer or the less separation distance there is, the more risk there is to groundwater. And if groundwater gets contaminated, then there's more risk of having disease from that. An important factor to consider is soil content. Virginia's regulations require a maximum separation distance of only 20 inches in clay-rich soils and as little as 2 inches of separation in sandy soils. Dr. Ray Renault is actively involved in the study of natural soil processes and their effect on wastewater treatment. In coarser textured soils, we tend to have a larger percentage of large pores. Water can move through these pores more rapidly, carrying biological agents, bacteria and viruses, both with them at a much more rapid rate than it can occur in, let's say, finer textured soils that you may find in the Piedmont or the Mountain Valley regions of the state of Virginia. Now what this means is that this water, the wastewater is going to move through larger pores and move more rapidly in sandy soils to the groundwater and we're going to have reduced removal of biological and chemical contaminants, which means that in the coastal plain, now where we have a 2 inch separation distance, we're essentially introducing these organisms directly into a groundwater of some type. A recent survey of Health Department files revealed that one-third of the on-site septic system permits issued in Tidewater, Virginia were for systems one foot or less above the groundwater table as defined by the Health Department. However, recent soil research has demonstrated that water tables can rise 12 to 18 inches higher than the Health Department regulations predict. As a result, when ground waters rise in the spring, more than one-third of the drain fields in Tidewater can be resting in or submerged by the groundwater table. This lays the groundwork for polluted waters to travel into community drinking water supplies and individual wells. Concern for public drinking water quality led to a Department of Health study evaluating the extent and degree to which groundwater contamination is occurring in Virginia. The 1991 study of wells showed high percentages of well water contamination in Virginia. Areas with separation distances of less than 18 inches showed sewage contamination for more than one out of every six wells tested. Yet areas with a separation distance of 18 inches or more showed sewage contamination in fewer than one out of every 13 of the wells tested. Clearly, increased separation distances provide better wastewater treatment. Usually, something on the order of two to four feet of natural or undisturbed soil underneath the drain field is a minimal requirement for the effective treatment of wastes. So first, you have to have a sufficient level or quantity of soil underneath the drain field. And secondly, the soil has to be unsaturated. Unsaturated means that oxygen from the atmosphere has an opportunity to filter down through the soil and be used in the process of breathing and respiration by the microorganisms in the same way that we do. We don't breathe very well underwater. Neither do these microorganisms that consume the intestinal organisms that are added through our waste. Research shows that two to four feet of unsaturated soil between the bottom of the drain field and the groundwater table is necessary to allow sufficient oxygen for the treatment of wastewater. So far, we have identified and documented a serious problem that hits us literally right where we live. What can be done to remedy the problem? In October 1990, a task force was appointed by the governor's cabinet to investigate the issue of proper residential wastewater management regulations in Virginia. Headed by the Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the University of Virginia, the task force reviewed the adequacy of Virginia's septic system regulations and the appropriate use of alternative septic system technologies for sewage disposal. Developer Bob Lieberitz was a member of the task force. The work of this task force was to address the implications of wastewater as it would leave the system and then move towards the groundwater in existence below that. Obviously, in those discussions, two inches just logically didn't even make sense. And so in investigating what existed both within the Commonwealth and within surrounding states, we found that no one that we could locate had anything that even approached a two inch separation. The task force found that Virginia's two inch separation distance to groundwater in sandy soils is the most lenient requirement of this kind found anywhere in the country. In the Mid-Atlantic region, South Carolina requires a six inch separation. North Carolina comes in at 18 inches in sandy soils and 12 inches in other soils. Delaware has a 36 inch separation distance and the Maryland standard is 48 inches. The task force also addressed the economic impact of changing the regulations, in part by reviewing a 1989 Health Department study. The study evaluated whether septic system permitting and therefore housing development would increase or decrease if the separation distance were increased from two inches to 18 inches. The study concluded that an increased separation distance combined with the use of alternative septic system designs would cause no increase in permit denials. Alternative systems available for Virginians are elevated sand mounds, low pressure distribution systems and other innovative technologies. The designs of these systems allow for both sewage treatment and disposal. An elevated sand mound is built on top of the ground. Wastewater filters through a foot or more of sand before entering the earth's surface. Only then does the partially treated wastewater filter through the soil receiving additional treatment before entering the groundwater. In a low pressure distribution system, wastewater is pumped to a series of pipes lying in gravel filled trenches. Because the wastewater is pumped into the pipes, it is distributed evenly throughout the system. As a result, every square foot of soil under the system receives less wastewater to treat and dispose of. This allows the soil to do a better job of both treating and disposing of the wastewater. Low pressure distribution systems are more suitable than conventional gravity systems for shallow installations. The technology exists to protect our groundwater supplies, but what are the costs of installing effective on-site sewage treatment systems? According to the Task Force report, a $65,000 home with a conventional on-site septic system would increase in cost if an alternative septic system technology were employed. Using a low pressure distribution system, the same house would cost $68,000. And using an elevated sand mound, the house would cost $71,000. Obviously, when any change that you would make would carry with it additional cost, those additional costs, I think, would meet against the long-term implications of not having available or appropriate groundwater, or probably, obviously, lesser than the expense that we would face if we did not have appropriate groundwater. Some local governments have experienced threats to groundwater supplies because of clusters of failed septic systems in communities isolated from a central sewer system. These localities have found this situation to bring significant human health and water quality risks to the forefront. As the local governments have worked to clean up and repair these failures, millions of dollars were required to install centralized wastewater treatment facilities. There are other costs. In not having sufficient volumes of water to meet the demand, you restrict the usage of the individuals that are there. You have to go into conservation measures to reduce that consumption, but you also impact the growth and the economy of the area. At the same time, industries that are going to carry with them high requirements of water supply are obviously going to find either the cost of obtaining that commodity too high to justify locating there, or simply not going to be able to locate there because they can't get the volume that's necessary, and as a result, they move elsewhere. Historically, Virginia as a commonwealth has presumed that depositing partially or completely untreated sewage water into the earth's soil mantle would not harm people, wildlife, or the environment. According to current findings, Virginia appears to be incorrect on all three counts. This means that raw sewage is being combined directly with fresh drinking waters and recreational waters. This poses a threat to people, wildlife, and the environment. Virginia's groundwater is a statewide resource. Once groundwater becomes contaminated with intestinal microorganisms that can cause diseases, when people draw that groundwater from their wells into their homes and drink it, that groundwater is virtually impossible with today's technology to clean up. We don't have adequate ways of pulling groundwater out from deep beneath the ground, treating it, and then putting it back. It is evident that preventive measures must be put in place to protect against groundwater contamination. Key task force recommendations for the protection of groundwater supplies against septic system contamination are Virginia should increase the minimum separation distance to 24 inches in sandy soils and 18 inches in other soils. And in combination with the 24 and 18 inch separation distances, increased use of alternative septic system technologies must be employed. As with many public health and environmental issues today, differing perspectives on real and perceived needs exist in the separation distance arena. Economic interests, development interests, and environmental and public health interests each must be considered. This is a very tough issue to have to deal with. You have economic reality on one side and public health environmental protection on the other. And I think through the work that's been done, the recommendation of a 24 inch separation distance and the use of alternative systems is making a balance between economics and environmental and public health protection. And I think it's the best policy to go forward with. There are several ways in which each citizen can be an active member in the force to make responsible and effective decisions to protect the health of the Commonwealth. During the upcoming year, the Department of Health will be proposing stricter regulations as a result of the task force study. You can attend public hearings and speak in favor of effective regulations. Check this video out of your local library and show it to your neighborhood PTA and civic groups. Learn about your property and its position in soils. And contact your local health department office for brochures on wastewater and groundwater, on-site sewage system maintenance, sighting a drain field, and alternative septic systems. Taking care to provide for water use and treatment needs today and for tomorrow will bring healthy futures to the people, environment and economy of Virginia. These benefits should be passed to future generations so they will also be able to enjoy the rich inheritance of Virginia's natural resource treasures and pass them on.