Jacob Stachnik, a worker at Concrete Service in Traverse City, Michigan, stands on a stack of septic tanks. Water pollution and diseases linked to septic system failures are becoming more problematic in the United States.
As the SSTS Annual Report shows, Minnesota is slowly but surely reducing the number of septic systems in the state that pose a threat to human health and/or groundwater. However, an online article from circle of blue, an organization founded by journalists and scientists, reports this trend is not necessarily consistent across the country.
“Problems come from all directions. Hormones and pharmaceutical compounds, for instance, were found in the groundwater near septic systems on Fire Island, New York, and in New England, according to a January 2015 study from U.S. Geological Survey researchers.
“Researchers with the Baylor College of Medicine are discovering a resurgence of parasitic diseases in rural Alabama because of poor sanitation and septic system failure. They will present their findings at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual conference, from October 25 to 29.
“In Ohio, the state health department estimates that nearly one out of every three septic systems is failing.
“Just how dangerous faulty septic systems can become was illustrated eight years ago at the Log Den, a steak-and-seafood restaurant on Wisconsin’s pastoral Door Peninsula. On June 1, 2007, three weeks after it opened, the Log Den unexpectedly closed. Two hundred eleven patrons and 18 staff members fell ill with norovirus, a stomach ailment that causes vomiting and diarrhea. The viral outbreak, in which six people required hospital treatment, was not due to the restaurant’s food. It was the water. Though properly permitted, the restaurant’s septic system failed. Toilet wastes leaked into the ground, coursed through fissures in the soil and rock, and reached the limestone aquifer that supplied the restaurant’s water well. The foul waste mixed with fresh water used for drinking, ice-making, and lettuce-washing. The Log Den, in an inadvertent error unknown to its owner, had poisoned its own well…
“… For septic to work as designed, a chain of event needs to take place, explained Craig Mains of the National Environmental Services Center. The tank must be well designed. The drain field must be rigorously evaluated. Sandy or limestone soils that are too porous allow the waste to percolate too quickly into the water table, without time for microbes to convert it into beneficial organic matter. Soils that are too compact, like clay, cause the waste to flow into rivers and streams.
“The drain field must also be located far enough away from waterbodies that the soil microbes have time to digest. Too much density is also bad for septic as it overwhelms the treatment capacity of the soil or raises the water table too high. Peter Groffman, a microbial ecologist at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, reckoned the ideal density, depending on soil and climate conditions, is one home or less per acre. On Fire Island, where U.S. Geological Survey researchers studied pharmaceuticals flowing from septic drains, the density is five homes per acre.
‘If the systems are correctly designed and installed, if the site is properly evaluated, and if they are maintained, then they are pretty effective,’ Mains said. ‘But they are as good as the weakest link in the chain. Often the weakest link is the homeowner.’”
The article goes on to describe other issues as well and what is needed for the nation to adequately address problems posed by a lack of investment in septic treatment infrastructure, both in rural septic systems as well as municipal wastewater treatment facilities. (Thanks to former MPCA employee Gretchen Sabel for finding and forwarding this thought-provoking article.)
