No less than the U.S. EPA has stated that onsite treatment systems should be a permanent part of the nation's wastewater management infrastructure.
The advantages of onsite are clear: Lower cost than "big pipe" systems, flexibility, adaptability to site conditions, suitability for small communities or clusters of homes and businesses and, perhaps most important, effectiveness (especially given the array of advanced treatment and dispersal technologies available).
Now comes a study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with a surprising finding that a central wastewater treatment system had a smaller environmental footprint per gallon
