Paddle Strokes

NOWRA moves in affirmative directions with new member benefits and a renewed dedication to building influence in the halls of government

When canoeing, it’s a great sensation when a partner climbs aboard and immediately you feel the strokes of his or her paddle.

One gets something akin to that feeling from watching NOWRA in recent months. The organization has always had an amazingly dedicated group of volunteer directors. Now they have more staff resources behind them, with the appointment of Eric Casey as executive director and an affiliation with the Water Environment Federation that includes the sharing of office space.

Whatever may happen in the months and years ahead, there’s no question the organization is more serious than ever about serving members and raising the stature of onsite wastewater treatment.

 

Cases in point

I would cite as evidence three specific items. First, the Onsite Wastewater Systems Summit, held last June with the National Environmental Health Association and the State Onsite Regulators Alliance.

It was the first joint meeting of the three groups, and it is a promising sign of unity, bringing together the onsite industry’s national association, the purveyor of a national onsite system installation credential (NEHA), and the regulatory community. It makes all the sense in the world for those groups to be allied.

Second, NOWRA has begun to make more inroads on member benefits. The association recently partnered with Wells Fargo to provide members with discounts on interest rates and document fees for equipment purchases.

The bank’s Specialty Vehicles Division offers NOWRA members a 0.25 percentage-point discount from the prevailing interest rate for purchases of vehicles or related equipment in excess of $50,000.

In other words, if the going rate is 6 percent, NOWRA members can get a loan at 5.75 percent. The bank also reduces its document fees charge from $500 to $350. That’s not going to transform anyone’s business, but it is without question a tangible benefit and a nice step toward giving more for members’ association dues.

And third, maybe most important, there’s the initiative toward engaging a lobbyist to represent the industry’s interests in Washington.

Casey and the board observe, quite appropriately, that while onsite systems are recognized as part of the nation’s permanent wastewater treatment solution, the onsite industry gets only a tiny sliver of federal wastewater project funding under the EPA’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund.

 

Exploring potential

In this initiative, NOWRA is enlisting support from other national organizations, state affiliates, the manufacturing community, and interested individuals.

These affirmative steps are refreshing. In observing the onsite industry for several years as editor of this magazine, it has been frustrating to see so much creativity wasted and so much energy burned fighting gridlock of various kinds.

For example, there are great treatment technologies that aren’t used as widely as they might be because of outdated county or state regulations. There are differences in regulations from one county or state to another that make little technical sense, but that installers and designers must struggle with. Meanwhile, states bicker endlessly about updates to onsite regulations, taking several years to accomplish what on the surface seems as if it should be a fairly simple exercise.

An association like NOWRA, properly funded and supported, can do a great deal of good for the industry and everyone in it. NOWRA’s volunteer directors and professional staff clearly have industry members’ interests at heart.

 

Other initiatives

A variety of other initiatives are in various stages of development at NOWRA.

The association remains active in an onsite wastewater Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. EPA. That group is creating a Septic Sense campaign aimed at homeowners with septic systems. It is being test-marketed in preparation for an autumn 2011 rollout. The goal is to make sure installers and service providers have information from the campaign to post easily to their websites.

The MOU group is developing a position paper intended to promote the benefits of decentralized systems to engineers, political leaders, developers, Realtors and others who make decisions about wastewater treatment. The target is people involved in larger systems, from 5,000 to 500,000 gpd, including commercial facilities, cluster systems, and small-community wastewater projects.

NOWRA has been working with industry partners and community development groups in seeking federal funding to demonstrate the positive economic impact decentralized wastewater solutions can have on small communities, especially those that are disadvantaged.

NOWRA has joined with the Maryland Onsite Wastewater Professional Association (MOWPA) to fight state attempts to ban onsite systems in new development. NOWRA has taken part in meetings between MOWPA and key stakeholders on both sides of the argument.

The association has also co-sponsored distance learning seminars, one on the Ottertail Water Management District, one of the oldest and most successful Responsible Management Entity arrangements in the U.S., and one on Enterprise Cascadia, a nonprofit financial institution that provides grants or low-cost loans to homeowners who need to remediate onsite systems in sensitive sections of the Puget Sound watershed.

Many more initiatives are in the works.

 

Chicken or egg?

Historically, NOWRA has struggled to grow: Many industry practitioners have been content to rely solely on their state association, or have forgone association activity altogether. A number of state onsite associations have been highly effective. Imagine how effective NOWRA could be if all those associations pulled together on its behalf, and if more individual professionals got involved.

As with almost anything else, an industry association is what its members make it. While NOWRA strives with the resources it has to do the best it can for members and the industry as a whole, perhaps more practitioners should hark back to the immortal words of the late John F. Kennedy.

Ask not what NOWRA can do for you. Ask what you can do for your industry. Because what helps your industry helps you. Get behind NOWRA. Get on board. See what the strength of the entire force of industry members can get done.



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