Sometimes it’s easy to see when numbers don’t add up. I examined city and county budgets for many years as a local elected official, and questionable spending tends to jump out at you from a seemingly endless list of line items. Such was the case recently when I read a local news story about a small town in Vermont and its current wastewater woes.

The Moretown Wastewater Committee in Moretown, Vermont (population about 1,600), has hired an engineering firm to help explore options to deal with its future wastewater treatment needs. According to a story in the Valley Reporter in nearby Waitsfield, the town has $3.3 million in federal Inflation Reduction Act funds that could be used to build a wastewater treatment system for a small village area within the 40-square-mile township.

There is currently no centralized sewage system in Moretown, and this makes perfect sense given its light residential density and lack of commercial structures. According to Wikipedia, Moretown has one commercial building, a general store, which also serves as a meeting hall and community center of sorts. I can imagine these hardy New Englanders gathering at the general store every morning for a cup of coffee and a discussion about the changing weather. At any rate, most citizens likely conduct their daily business in Montpelier, 13 miles to the east, and Burlington, 39 miles to the west.

GREAT ONSITE SERVICE

Over its history, everyone in Moretown has been served by individual decentralized wastewater systems. The wastewater committee has some concerns about the septic systems serving 45 mostly residential users living in a small village district. For background, the story explained that single-family homes with four people produce 180 gallons of wastewater daily, 66,000 gallons per year, and up to twice that rate when usage spikes.

Wastewater committee member Jack Byrne explained:

“There have been 10 reported failures of onsite sewage systems in the village district between 1987 and 2022,” he said. “Failed systems sometimes have no good alternative locations for a new system and require a variance for a replacement that has a higher risk for another failure.”

Let’s pause here for a moment. This is the first of a few numbers that require a deeper dive. There have been 10 reported system failures in 35 years? Given that many say the expected life span of a well-used onsite system is in the neighborhood of 20-40 years, it seems residents of Moretown have been receiving yeoman’s service from their septic systems. And if you take into consideration that many rural homeowners tend to — putting it nicely — take a conservative approach to pumping and maintenance, these decentralized systems have been performing up to and beyond standard.

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

This is where we are reminded of the great value of septic service. The homeowner is responsible for the upkeep and treating the system with respect, for example avoiding overloading flow on laundry day and avoiding throwing so-called “flushable” wipes down the toilet and forgetting about it. In exchange for taking care of the systems, the homeowners avoid the high cost of hooking up to a municipal system and then paying frequently rising monthly service fees to maintain the public sewers.

Taking care of your own waste stream and keeping costs down; these are good, old-fashioned conservative New England values I would expect from the people of Moretown. But I digress. Let’s look at some more numbers.

I think the old saying is pennywise and pound foolish. That’s when you obsess about the cost of one thing without considering the bigger picture. The issue in Moretown is how to best provide wastewater services to a small group of users in what is considered the central “village” area. By the town’s numbers, there are 45 septic systems, some of which may need to be repaired or replaced. The town also has a windfall of $3.3 million courtesy of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Presumably the engineering firm will explore a wide range of solutions, from bringing lagging systems up to standard all the way to spending the entire amount on a state-of-the-art public sewer system. If the town wants to maintain its rural character, investing a significant sum on municipal sewers seems like overkill.

STICK WITH ONSITE

I would argue there are better decentralized options that could adequately cover all of the situations encountered: Cluster systems serving adjacent properties that don’t have the room for a new tank and drainfield. Advanced treatment systems that can be placed in a smaller footprint. Traditional tank drainfield systems where sites and soils allow.

Using the numbers, one thing I can say is almost certain: Spending millions in taxpayer money to provide service for 45 homes — or a few more to account for some future development — is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. The upfront per-dwelling expenditure would be staggering, not to mention the ongoing maintenance costs for a sewer system. And since the system would only serve a small percentage of town residents, consider how everyone else would feel not getting any benefit from the federal funds.

Rather, let’s look at a scenario where those residents can be served at a more reasonable cost, while at the same time ensuring their onsite systems function properly, don’t pollute the environment, and homeowners maintain the responsibility for their own waste streams.

First, I would suggest the town start a mandatory onsite system inspection and maintenance program to identify and repair or replace any failing systems. Depending on the technology, the town would arrange to have each system checked at a recommended interval and keep a public file with the inspection reports. Take it one step further and organize pumpouts as recommended to ensure the longest useful life of the system. Monitoring and pumping could be paid either by the town as a clean-water priority, or fall on the property owners as a user fee.

REPLACE AS NEEDED

As systems need replacing, some of the federal money could be directed toward loans or grants to cover a portion of the cost of the most appropriate system for 50 users. Let’s say a conventional system is suitable for half of the properties at a cost of $15,000 ($375,000 total); and the other half of the lots call for advanced treatment with systems costing an average of $35,000 ($875,000 total). If the town covers half of the cost of the upgrades, which would be very generous, the outlay is only $625,000 spread over many years.

Following this plan, the town achieves its environmental objectives, ensures quality, affordable wastewater service for its residents and maintains private ownership of treatment infrastructure as it has always been. And it saves a good portion of the federal relief dollars that can be put to use for other infrastructure needs, such as roads and bridges, public safety or other needed services.

If I could send Moretown officials a message as they embark on this important study of future wastewater service needs, it would be this: Don’t discount the value of onsite technology or assume that a public system is the best or only suitable solution. Remember that about 25% of Americans utilize decentralized systems for their wastewater treatment, and there’s a good chance this is the best answer for residents of this small town.