PHLT 8040 Week 10 Septic Bill Op-Ed Example

Op-Ed: The Septic Tank You Have Never Seen Could Be in Your Neighbor's Well

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Walden University

PHLT 8040: Advanced Public Health Policy and Advocacy

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Op-Ed: The Septic Tank You Have Never Seen Could Be in Your Neighbor's Well

The Septic Tank You Have Never Seen Could Be in Your Neighbor's Well

By Dana Whitfield. The author is a public health professional who lives in Pine Lake Township and writes here in a personal capacity.

Somewhere under the lawn of most homes around our lakes is a concrete tank and a field of buried pipes. Most of us have never seen ours. We know it only as a bill every few years when someone comes to pump it, and some of us do not know that much.

Here is what that buried system is supposed to do. Wastewater from the house settles in the tank, then trickles into the soil, where the dirt itself filters out bacteria and viruses before the water reaches the groundwater below. When a system is old, overloaded or sits too close to the water table, the soil cannot do that job, and sewage reaches groundwater nearly untreated. Often nothing shows on the surface.

That groundwater is where many of our neighbors get their drinking water, from private wells that no public agency tests. It also feeds the lakes where our children swim. Federal estimates have long suggested that a meaningful share of septic systems malfunction in any given year (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2002). In our state, no one knows how many, because nobody checks until the smell reaches next door or a family's well water tests positive for bacteria. Research in Wisconsin found that children living where septic systems were most concentrated had more diarrheal illness (Borchardt et al., 2003). Last summer, four beaches near my home posted bacteria advisories.

A bill now before the state Senate would change that. Senate File 1187 would require a septic inspection when a home is sold, as Massachusetts has done for decades. If the system has failed, it would have to be repaired within a year of the sale, and the money can be set aside at closing so the sale need not wait. The bill would also let homeowners borrow for repairs at low interest from a state fund that already exists to clean up water, with part of the loan forgiven for households with lower incomes.

That last part matters. A replacement system can cost as much as a used car, and sites near the water often need more advanced equipment that costs more and needs yearly servicing. Because a new septic system is expensive, and the people most likely to have old ones include retirees on fixed incomes who have owned lakeside cabins for decades. Without help, the bill would land hardest on them. With it, repairs that owners would face anyway when the system finally backs up into the basement can be planned and paid for over time.

There is a cost to the rest of us, too. Money the state fund lends to homeowners is money it does not lend that year to a town upgrading its sewage plant. I think that is a fair trade, and the fund is designed to recycle: every repair loan that is paid back becomes money for the next project, whether a sewage plant or another family's drain field. Thousands of failing systems spread across our lake country are a water quality problem as large as any single plant, and they have never received a dollar from the fund.

The state's realtors oppose a requirement at sale, arguing that inspections will delay closings and scare off buyers. Those are fair concerns, and the bill answers them: repairs can happen after closing, with money held in escrow, and an inspection stays valid for three years. A buyer who learns about a failing system before buying is better off than one who learns about it from a sick child or a closed beach.

A political scientist named E. E. Schattschneider once observed that the outcome of a political fight often depends on how many people join it (Schattschneider, 1960). Right now, the people with the most at stake in this bill, families drinking from wells and swimming in our lakes, mostly do not know it exists. The groups that oppose it do.

The Senate's environment committee will hear Senate File 1187 on March 4. If you live near a lake or drink from a well, call or write your senator on that committee and ask for a yes vote before the hearing. Tell them you want to know what is happening under the lawn next door.

References

Borchardt, M. A., Chyou, P.-H., DeVries, E. O., & Belongia, E. A. (2003). Septic system density and infectious diarrhea in a defined population of children. Environmental Health Perspectives, 111(5), 742-748. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.5914

Schattschneider, E. E. (1960). The semisovereign people: A realist's view of democracy in America. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2002). Onsite wastewater treatment systems manual (EPA/625/R-00/008). Office of Water.