Two months ago, I wrote a column about certain rural communities and their sanitation issues – lack of adequate septic systems – and suggested something needs to be done about it.
Last month, this magazine carried a story about U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that provide support for onsite systems: loans, grants and loan guarantees to develop or improve water and wastewater treatment, including installation of cluster systems for public bodies, tribes and not-for-profit corporations.
Connecting the dots, I hit upon the question: How much government assistance is appropriate for helping solve rural sanitation problems in low-income communities? Surely people who build nice homes in affluent subdivisions don't need or deserve such help. But what about people in impoverished regions who literally have nothing?
Who gets subsidized?
Especially in today's climate, "subsidy" can be a dirty word. The trend in government at all levels seems to be away from government spending money to fix problems. But then there's the idea that government should do things that need to be done, but that people and communities can't do on their own.
Perhaps in that spirit, our federal government for years massively subsidized the construction of wastewater treatment plants for cities and villages rich and poor. Grants covered as much as 80 to 90 percent of the costs, even though many residents of those communities could well have afforded the full expense. The reality was that without major government intervention, things weren't going to happen.
Going one step farther, most of us who own homes live in subsidized housing – we get federal and in many cases state tax deductions for the mortgage interest we pay. So exactly how dirty is that word subsidy?
Taking proper care
Now, what about more federal or state money (or both) for a concerted effort to correct the serious rural sanitation problems that we know exist in spots around the country? We subsidized big-pipe wastewater treatment as part of the price for achieving "fishable and swimmable" waters. What if we subsidized well built, fully functional septic systems in the name of protecting the health of rural families?
We didn't seem to mind building sewer systems and treatment plants to serve even the poorest residents of our inner cities. Why would we balk at investing money for sanitation for poor families out in the country?
As a nation we know the condition of our municipal water and sewer infrastructure (generally poor). We also know within reason how much it will take to bring it up to standard:
For wastewater systems, $13 billion to $21 billion per year, for 20 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
For drinking water infrastructure, more than $1 trillion over the next 25 years, according to the American Water Works Association.
Do we even have a clue what it would cost to bring desperately poor people's septic systems into acceptable condition around the country? (My guess: It would be dramatically less than for fixing municipal systems.)
Where to begin?
If we don't know the cost of the solution, that's a good sign we don't know the extent of the problem. If we find out, then we can collectively decide what to do about it. All right, maybe the government is "strapped for funds" at present, but isn't the provision of safe and sanitary conditions a part of what decent societies do? Isn't it one of those things government must do because people can't do it on their own?
The National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association (NOWRA) has been campaigning at some level for onsite treatment to receive a larger share of federal wastewater funding, which now disproportionately goes to "big-pipe" systems. Perhaps here is a place to start: Find out (or respectably estimate) just how many homes in badly impoverished areas lack proper sanitation. Then calculate the cost of a fix.
For my money, no matter how hard the times are for government revenue, it's unacceptable in a rich nation like ours to have people living in filth. The first step toward solving the problem is to define and quantify it.
