Door County Environmental Council Column

After the Log Den Restaurant’s drinking water problems became evident, everyone now seems concerned with the inspection process addressing the failed homeowner wastewater systems throughout the county. After conferring with the County Sanitarian John Teichtler, DCEC organized two brainstorming sessions with all of the sanitary service providers invited.

One was held in southern Door in Maplewood, and the second at the Liberty Grove Town Hall in northern Door County. Both of these mid-June sessions were well attended by an interested representative cross-section of installers, service people and regulatory staff members.

One of the major concerns from official personnel voiced during the sessions was that the County Planning Department needs to be more critical of, and better enforce, permit applications that specify the number of bedrooms in a dwelling. These determine the size of a given building’s wastewater system.

The service and installation people indicated that the forecast water usage is often considerably lower than actual use because of new trends such as hot tubs and generally higher gallon use than is anticipated, resulting in overloaded wastewater systems.

For these reasons, along with common sense, water conservation should be a countywide priority for our limited groundwater resource.

Funding assistance for low-income homeowners, in addition to the Wisconsin Fund, which helps with grants for those financially stressed, was suggested as an incentive to get people to act on their own.

Both brainstorming groups were receptive to exploring other financial sources that could underwrite loans or grants to assist homeowners. The feeling was that many homeowners are aware that their system is failed, that they are waiting for inspections and replacement orders, not willing to proceed on their own.

For homeowners to proceed on their own would allow them to plan at their leisure rather than panic in a situation of last-minute legal orders. It was felt that funding assistance with an expiration deadline for availability might help expedite these voluntary conversions prior to replacement orders.

At the Liberty Grove session, Bud Kalms, town administrator, reported the documented number of failed systems in a research area of their town had reached 70 percent.

Liberty Grove’s research was expedited by the town as a study for possible expansion of the Sister Bay wastewater system and/or establishing a town-wide sanitary district. It’s fair to conclude that the percentage of failed systems in Liberty Grove is representative of most of Door County, as reported in earlier issues of the Peninsula Pulse and our newsletter.

The consensus from the sanitarian’s office, and most of the participants present, was that locally-owned, individual, properly-operating wastewater systems do a more acceptable job of processing waste than does a municipal system operating under current state regulations. Municipal wastewater treatment facilities in Wisconsin are allowed limited discharge, up to 2mcg/l Phosphorous, which would not occur at all in a properly operating homeowner system.

In addition, most pathogens or pharmaceuticals that are currently not destroyed in a municipal system, even with disinfectants, are removed or trapped in a properly-functioning homeowner wastewater system.

Also brought out at the sessions was the official prediction that it will take at least 10 years to complete the project. Continuing at the current rate is unacceptable and something needs to be done.

Yet, the consensus at both meetings was that to expedite inspections with more staff would cause local installers to not be able to address the additional work. The result would be an influx of transient installers, who sometimes have quality and workmanship problems.

Some voiced the concern that once the systems are all updated that the workload would diminish sufficiently, causing some problems. An update of State Comm 83 would make the water use and control of waste more realistic in today’s water use determination.

These two sessions were very helpful in gaining extra input from the people doing the work out in the field and to bring together all of the stakeholders in this long process.

After summarizing all of the comments and ideas that emerged from these two sessions, the DCEC Water Resources Committee is engaged in creating a list of workable recommendations. These will be made available to Door County Health and Sanitation officials, to the public in our next DCEC newsletter and Web site, and to the news media.

A sincere thank you to this dedicated committee for taking on this project for our future generations who deserve a viable groundwater supply far into the future.

For further information on DCEC call 920.743.6003, email [email protected] or visit http://www.dcec-wi.org.