|
"Otter Tail County is an interesting and significant
one in that it contains 1,500 of Minnesota's 15,000
lakes," says Jim Anderson, co-director of the Water
Resources Center in Minneapolis.
In the early 1970s, Minnesota passed shoreline legislation
requiring counties to look at septic systems along lakeshores
and enact shoreline county ordinances consistent with the
1972 Shoreline Act. In addition to this, the counties had
to look at the systems within their shore areas and have a
way to deal with them.
In 1984, Otter Tail County residents noticed a marked decline
in the water quality of their lakes, which started to experience
algal blooms and decreasing visibility. Septic systems were
recognized as being an important part of the picture. In fact,
a number of the systems in place were simply straight pipes
into the lakes.
Rollie Mann, chief administrator on the Otter Tail OWT project,
has lived in the area all his life and was originally on the
township board. "The lakeshore environment in the county
has been something very near and dear to me all my life. I
realized early on that there was definitely a problem with
pollution in the lake, so from the start I was very interested
in this project."
Anderson considers Mann and his work instrumental to the
success of the project over the past two decades. "Sanitary
districts, lakeshore associations, and those sorts of things
often seem to fall apart after a while in many places. Close
personal involvement makes a clear difference. Rollie Mann
has been there all the time, as a strong leader. Without having
a person that invested in a project, I can see where there
could be problems." Mann came onboard with the project
full time in 1984 and then became the administrator.
With the idea of forming a sanitary district, the founders
decided to go to the EPA for an assistance grant. "All
of that was perhaps 10 years in development to reach the point
in 1984 when work actually started on the system," says
Anderson.
In 1982, the final environmental impact study was concluded,
followed by a public hearing in 1984. Eight hundred and fifty
new individual onsite treatment systems and cluster systems
started in 1984 were completed by the following year.
The total grant expenses initially were $5,621,700, with
construction costs of $4,347,400 and engineering costs of
$1,106,000. Administrative costs came to $130,423, while land
costs were $37,800. Total nonreimbursable expenses paid by
landowners and the county were $244,660—including financing
and bonding charges. These are all substantially less than
what this same system would cost today. Grant availabilities
have dropped as system installation costs have risen, so today's
homeowners typically are paying much higher costs for similar
services.
With an initial serving capacity of 1,200 homes, cabins,
and businesses, the district now serves some 1,545 connections,
all of which either use an individual system or are connected
to one of 16 cluster systems. Seventy five percent of the
connections are classified as seasonal residents, 25% are
permanent residents, and 3% are resorts or businesses. The
system is composed of septic tanks and conventional trenches.
Some of the tanks have pumps in them and some do not. The
cluster systems are made up of tanks with drain fields. Some
of the lakes within the district contain more than one cluster
system. There are resorts and commercial establishments that
contain cluster septic systems as well. The district consists
of six lakes, four townships and sections of the city of Otter
Tail.
The soil in the area is relatively sandy, not coarse, and
as a result the system did not really need anything else.
"Even today this system might be able to be installed
without any pretreatment," says Sara Christopherson,
extension specialist for the Onsite Sewage Treatment Program,
Water Resources Center. "Before the opening of the system
in 1985, most of what was in operation was substandard. A
small percentage of the preexisting systems at that time were
in compliance, but the vast majority were not."
The county board appointed managers for the sanitary sewer
district, and the project received a state permit. These three
entities—state, county and sanitation district—were
the main players in the project. At the time it was started,
the project was fairly innovative for its type. Overall, the
state was involved in the design and approval of the system
as well as in the placement of monitoring wells. There was
initial concern over whether or not this was going to be a
sustainable choice. "We've come a long way in
the last 20 years in our understanding of septic systems as
a long-term solution," says Christopherson. "What
was innovative about this system was the idea of solving a
wastewater treatment problem with decentralized systems. Clusters
of individual systems around a lake were fairly unusual. The
big difference was that this system was centrally managed,
which is the direction things are going today."
Today the district board of managers provides oversight
and has one full-time and two part-time employees. The board
selects members from within the district boundaries and has
the ability to write and enforce ordinances, levy taxes, hire
a manager, set user fees, and develop a yearly operating budget.
This board is basically an independent entity with the responsibility
to oversee operations. Its mode of operation is similar to
that of many nonprofit organizations. No funds are allocated
other than established fees.
Now that the project is completed, Mann wears several hats.
Besides handling the management aspect of things, he is also
the maintenance supervisor. He feels the key to the success
of Otter Tail comes down to basic management and maintenance.
"With so many people, once the septic system is installed,
it's ‘out of sight, out of mind',"
says Mann. "We run a preventive maintenance program
that includes inspecting the tanks on a regular basis and
checking the lift stations on a regular basis to make sure
they're functioning properly as well. The tanks need
to be pumped because we physically pull samples out of them
to see how much sludge and scum is in them. If you want things
to cost less money down the road, you have to be proactive
up front. But it's tough to tell people that, to keep
the tanks pumped and to keep the lifts pumped. It's
not rocket science, just common sense on some things that
have to be done to make it work."
The district has an annual operating budget of only $140,000.
For maintenance of the systems, district residents may choose
to be on either an active or passive maintenance program.
Under the active plan, the permanent resident pays $120 for
a tank and drain field, $168 for a tank, pump and drain field,
$196 for a permanent cluster system, or $152 for a seasonal
cluster system. The district provides maintenance, repairs,
and replacement of the systems. Those on the passive plan,
though still under the jurisdiction of the district, pay only
the administrative fee of $36–$38 and must pay for their
own maintenance, repair, and replacement costs.
Cluster systems are required to be on the active program.
The choice of whether a system is to be active or passive
is made at the time of construction. Once on the active program,
the property cannot go to the passive program, but a system
on the passive program can switch to active. Some 16 clusters
have now been installed in areas that contain small lake lots
or poor soils, or those that cannot support individual systems
onsite. Cost of new construction falls on the landowners,
but the district inspects all systems in the course of construction
to ensure Minnesota's rules—particularly 7080
(Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, 2002). Approval must
come before the completion of construction.
Those working on the systems are state-licensed and also
must have a working knowledge of how each system component
works. In 20 years of operation, 17 of the more than 1,500
onsite systems have met with replacement. This is a 1.1% failure
rate. One hundred and twenty older, pre-project systems have
been replaced or upgraded.
At the district's formation, its board of managers
was required to install groundwater-monitoring wells around
the cluster systems and to monitor domestic wells. The wells
have been sampled continuously since 1984. Lake health has
been tracked through secchi disk readings and phosphorous
measurements. So far the data shows improved lake quality
and little if any impact on groundwater from the systems.
When the systems were initially installed, mound systems
or aboveground sand beds that dealt with pressure distribution
were a new state-of-the-art technology. They were used in
combination with other systems. "Just the fact that
they put pumps in the system and actually pumped the effluent
elsewhere, either into a series of trenches or into aboveground
mound systems was a significant thing 20 years ago,"
says Anderson. "Now people are more accustomed to having
pumps in the systems or taking the effluent to the best places
to take care of it either on the lot or within clusters. [The
systems] also moved into alternative technologies that usually
involve pumps and pressure distribution of some kind. Before
the new system, we had either cesspools or cesspools with
overflows to the lake or the drainage ditch. That was a big
deal, then, to work with pump stations, pumps, and floats.
The technology with pressure distribution within mound systems
in particular was quite a step up."
In winter it is critical that the supply pipes from the
pump stations to the treatment systems drain out completely
each time they have water in them. They come up through freezing
soil. Water standing in the pipes will freeze, and there is
insulation on some of them to help prevent this.
Anderson says the system has probably saved the residents
money over the years. Though that is hard to document, it
is clear that the older units which were in use would be breaking
down now at a much higher rate were the system not in place.
Such breakdowns would have caused other problems to take place.
Part of the current management strategy is making sure the
tanks are pumped on time and that everything is inspected
in the process of completing the task. Each system is looked
at every three years. "Any structural defects can be
seen, changed, and fixed. If that does not get done over a
20-year period, there are things that are going to break."
According to Christopherson, there was discussion of a larger
system that would probably have cost more. It also would have
led to more rapid growth in the area. "The biggest difference
in the use of the smaller cluster system … is that there
hasn't been huge growth around the lake. There has really
been very limited, second-tier development, and this has kept
the area's rural character intact. For better or worse,
many residents around the lake did not want to see two to
three times the amount of development taking place. They weren't
interested in stopping growth as much as controlling development
overall. Population growth in the area has been around 10%
in 20 years—which isn't a lot."
Mann says that a larger, collection-type system would have
been cost-prohibitive even at the time the Otter Tail project
came about and also would have been triple the cost of the
present system to install. "What has worked for us is
having 13 small-to-large cluster sites in the areas where
we could not get a drain field on the property. In those areas
where the drain field was not adequate around a particular
property, the effluent is pumped off the property to community
drain fields scattered around the district. If possible, the
effluent is treated in systems onsite if they are certain
to handle the load—once they'd been upgraded,
repaired and inspected, of course."
When the system was initially set up, the fact that replacements
would be necessary was factored in as well as the idea that
fees would have to be charged. Also the decision was made
to have a reserve fund. Christopherson knows of communities
today that are not collecting fees for replacement costs of
their systems. "From the regulatory standpoint, the
Otter Tail project has exceeded expectations," says
Christopherson. "Despite that fact, I think overall
the community is not always aware of the successful system
in their midst. As long as things are going well and costs
or fees aren't on the rise, it's easy for residents
to lose track. I see this easily because of my perspective
in dealing with communities where sometimes things don't
go as well. It is too bad that awareness is most keen, perhaps,
when there are problems. In any case, I think the Otter Tail
system has really been lucky."
The downside of the project is that funding received at
the time this system began is simply not available today.
Otter Tail will never need grant dollars again. "But
this makes it tough for us when we go out and present the
Otter Tail project to different communities," says Christopherson.
"We often get the reply that ‘Well, they had millions
of dollars up front with their grants; we don't have
that.' The question now is: would homeowners back then
have been willing to come up with $5,000 per household to
put this system in place, as we are now having to ask homeowners
in today's communities when we approach them about such
a system?"
Christopherson has given a number of talks about the system.
Last year she addressed the National Onsite Wastewater Recycling
Association. She's trying to get the word out that communities
have a choice as to what sort of systems they want to put
in to take care of their sewage infrastructure. She uses the
Otter Tail project as an example of one of the choices that
is available for them to make. "My feeling is that no
matter where people live, having clean drinking water and
the ability to flush a toilet is a privilege they have to
pay for, and not a right that's always there for them."
"We do have other sanitary districts like this around
the state," says Anderson. "They haven't
necessarily come about as a result of Otter Tail doing this,
but there are others out there doing this. To that extent
there is an exchange of information that occurs and they may
end up looking at that example and it causes them to try and
go another route where they can get someone else to take care
of it for them."
There have been a number of pump failures, involving replacement,
and at least one system has failed per year. But aside from
that they haven't had to do anything except basic operations
and maintenance. Of the systems that failed, Christopherson
is not sure how many were original systems from before 1985.
Since they complied with standards at the startup in 1985,
they were incorporated into the new system.
Mann wonders about the future of the system, because there
is not another model out there to follow as the system ages.
"What do we do?" asks Mann. "Just try to
follow what we have, or should we be looking to obtain more
land to install more cluster systems? I hate the expression
‘failure.' It's a terrible word to use with
an onsite system. When the life expectancy is gone, where
are you going to go with a lot of this stuff? A lot of these
lots we are working with simply do not have room on them for
other drain fields. We are looking at that to try to figure
out what we should be doing. In the meantime we are staying
heavily involved in the preventive-maintenance end of things,
trying to preclude any problems that may arise or at least
be aware of problems that are starting to surface so that
you have some sort of future game plan ahead of you. Even
with the low annual fees that users are required to pay, they
don't realize that those funds go solely for future
problems as they arise."
Mann is well aware of any places in the system where there
might be a chance of a worst-case scenario. He is also aware
of how much land costs and how much it continues to rise in
cost. Though Mann remains the only full-time person on the
staff, he feels that situation is going to have to change
in the near future. "Our district is growing,"
notes Mann. "We have new people moving in and new lands
being developed within us, and we are stretched pretty thin
at the moment. We've gone from 1,200 to 1,600 or more
units in the district, and things continue to grow every year."
Anderson has heard people suggest that such a system as
the Otter Tail Water Management District cannot really be
done or that groups could never come together and work cooperatively
on such a system. He likes to point out to people who are
skeptical that the district is a good example of at least
one place where not only were they successful in doing that,
and have been successful for a number of years in dealing
with both the technical and the human side, but also where
they have observed a clear betterment in their water quality—the
reason the system was started to begin with. System improvements
and management occur at affordable costs resulting in improved
lake quality and property values while maintaining the rural
character of the community, despite moderate growth. For many
out there in similar circumstances, you couldn't ask
for much more than that.
PETER HILDERBRANDT writes on engineering
and scientific subjects.
OW - January/February 2006 |
