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| Little Pink Houses, Part I: A special report on the impact of onsite sewer in Middle Tennessee |
By: By BRIAN HARVILLE
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Across Tennessee?s three grand divisions, a silent housing boom is dotting the countryside with thousands of new rooftops, shifting the population growth from urbanized areas to outlying rural lands once thought unsuitable for widespread residential development.
Newfound methods for treating residential wastewater known as decentralized or ?on-site? sewer systems are enabling much of the explosion in rural development, having already fueled the construction of at least 18,000 homes spread across some of the state?s most rustic locales.
The decentralized systems are replacing the traditional use of septic tanks, serving in some instances more than 1,000 homes on one free-standing, on-site system rather than one septic tank per home.
Thus far, the new trend in development has had the strongest impact on the fast-growing Middle Tennessee ?donut counties? surrounding Nashville that complete the capitol city?s metropolitan statistical area.
According to figures obtained by The Lebanon Democrat from county planning offices, state government agencies and on-site industry insiders, almost 6,000 home sites ? with hundreds already built ? are planned in conjunction with service from on-site sewer systems in Williamson, Rutherford and Wilson counties.
County planning officials across Middle Tennessee say finding a mechanism to slow the growth in rural areas that lack the necessary infrastructure ? mainly roads and schools ? to handle the growth has proven next to impossible.
Approval for the systems happens at the state level, far out of the reach of local planners? and county planning commissions who often are working with county zoning guidelines ill-equipped to deal with decentralized sewer?s ability to support residential building.
?The state approves them,? Williamson County Planning Director Greg Langeliers said of decentralized systems. ?The Tennessee Regulatory Authority issues the need and necessity letter ? and they also grant the service areas. They make an assumption that sewer is better than no sewer.?
The on-site sewer phonomenon may hold an unwelcome irony for taxpayers in still rural counties.
A small amount of federal and state funding for the fledgling decentralized sewer industry is at least in part driving a residential growth boom that may eventually bring tax increases and other revenue measures to pay for infrastructure to support the new rural subdivision explosion.
Big Numbers
It is unclear based on state government estimates and informed opinions from decentralized sewer industry insiders how many homes have been built on the still relatively new wastewater disposal systems.
A little-known report released this month by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation gives the most complete picture to date of the burgeoning decentralized sewer industry.
The report shows 183 decentralized wastewater treatment systems in Tennessee serving 18,000 homes and 77,000 residents.
The report also shows three of Middle Tennessee?s hottest growth spots ? Wilson, Williamson and Rutherford counties ? as leaders in the statewide decentralized sewer boom. Sevier and Blount counties in East Tennessee round out the top five list of counties with active decentralized systems in place.
Figures from government planning staffs in the three Middle Tennessee counties also show thousands of homes using decentalized sewers are coming to rural areas in future years.
In Williamson County, for example, roughly 50 homes have already been built as a result of decentalized sewer, and 1,000 more have been approved for construction. In neighboring Rutherford County, 794 homes have been built and another 1,931 approved.
With nearly 2,700 homes tied to decentralized sewer systems approved for construction and 300 already completed, Wilson County is at the forefront of the new rural development wave.
In fact, according to Dr. John Buchanan, a water quality expert with the University of Tennessee Department of Biosystems Engineering and Environmental Science, Wilson County could be considered ground zero for a development trend that may change the face of Tennessee?s landscape.
Buchanan, who also serves as director of the UT Center for Decentralized Wastewater Management, said he has heard figures in the industry even higher than the TDEC report, suggesting there may be as many as 100,000 homes on decentralized sewer in the state.
Infrastructure Drain
Prior to the advent of decentralized sewer in Rutherford County, county planning director John Davis said traditional septic tanks were the only option for sewage disposal in outlying areas, allowing for roughly one home per acre.
Today, however, a decentralized sewer technology known as septic tank effluent pump (STEP) systems have made it possible for developers to fit nearly three homes on a single acre of rural land. The increased population density now found in rural areas outside Murfreesboro, LaVergne and Smyrna has significantly increased traffic on narrow, winding country roads.
?Everything in Rutherford County that?s not zoned for commercial or industrial development is zoned R-15, which means 15,000-square-foot lots,? Davis said. ?? The infrastructure issue is a problem, but it?s not something we can really address because the county saw fit about 20 or 30 years ago to rezone everything in the county to R-15. ?Whether it?s on a suitable road or not, we don?t have any choice in the matter.?
Issues in Rutherford County with its 25 STEP systems ? the most of any county in Tennessee ? are emblematic of other counties experiencing the STEP residential boom.
Often, zoning regulations in county governments are not designed to keep high-density residential growth in check as the impact of STEP systems seem largely unanticipated.
The Wilson County Planning Department was slightly more prepared for the wave of rural residential development, according to Wilson County Planner Tom Brashear, who said densities similar to those in Rutherford County are not permissable here.
?With the onset of the STEP systems, my predecessors saw fit to upsize the R-1 zoning district ? it started out at 15,000-square-feet and then went up to 20,000, and now, it?s at 25,000,? Brashear said. ?So, there has been a little movement to make the minimum lot size in R-1 a little bit larger.?
Wilson County Road Superintendent Steve Armistead shared the concerns expressed by Davis regarding rural development?s impact on narrow, rural roads unfit to carry potentially thousands of cars.
As an example of potential expense for county taxpayers, Armistead points to a subdivision slated to consist of more than 40 homes off Baldy Ford Road, just south of Cedars of Lebanon State Park and east of the unincorporated community of Vine.
Once the new subdivision is completed, Armistead estimated his department would spend $20,000 to widen the road. The veteran road superintendent has already publicly stated a new fee system for developers will need to be in place to offset the cost to his department.
?A lot of people are going out and buying up road frontage and using the STEP systems to be able to use the road frontage. Therefore, we?re sitting here with 10-foot, 12-foot, 14-foot-wide narrow roads that don?t have a lot of traffic count on them at this point,? Armistead said. ?The systems are creating some problems along that line, and we?re going to have to find a revenue base or some way to handle the infrastructure problem that they have created for us.?
As director of Wilson County Schools, Dr. Jim Duncan keeps his finger firmly planted on the pulse of residential development across the county, and he indicated the upsurge in rural building would impact far more than just school bus trips on rural roads when it comes to his department.
Duncan said one STEP system in particular has his office?s attention, the Pine Creek Golf Course system serving not only the golf course but three residential developments in the area.
According to Wilson County planners, the Pine Creek system has the potential to expand to serve a maximum of 3,000 homes in the middle of the already growth laden rural communty of Gladeville in West Wilson County.
Duncan said the residential building tied to the Pine Creek system has been worked into the school system?s 20-year growth plan and could ?very well? affect Gladeville Elementary School in the long term. Already, a new Mt. Juliet High School is planned for West Wilson County as well as an expansion to Wilson Central High School which primarily serves Gladeville residents.
?As long as you?re sparsely populated, you can generally fit in students in various schools because people are buying five-acre plots, and they?ve got one house on it. That keeps things spread out,? Duncan said. ?But, if they buy five acres, and there are five houses on it, then that changes things ? I think it would have a significant impact on where schools need to be located.?
Ironically, he said, the proliferation of rural neighborhoods around decentralized systems could have a detrimental effect on the sewer capacity at a handful of county schools, particularly those outside of municipal boundaries. Schools in outlying communities such as Gladeville and Tuckers Crossroads are served by self-contained sewer systems, and an influx of new students would require upgrading the capabilities of those systems.
It?s a situation Duncan described as ?the third or fourth domino to fall? on schools as a result of dense rural development.
?One of the things that would be of a lot of concern, especially in the Gladeville area, the Carroll-Oakland area and the Tuckers Crossroads area is that those schools are on their own individual systems,? he said. ?If there are major subdivisions built that will impact a lot of enrollment at those schools, that?s going to be a major consideration. If you go out there and add 15 classrooms, will the current sewer system handle it?
It could mean a totally new sewer system for those schools.?
The lesser of two evils
Decentralized waste water system pioneers in the private sector, state officials and others who fostered the spread of the technology across Tennessee contend the systems are a more eco-friendly alternative to the conventional septic tank.
The success of a traditional septic system is dependent upon the individual homeowner who maintains the device and, therefore, brings a greater risk of failure. As decentralized systems are monitored by private utilities on a regular basis, experts say the risk of failure is greatly reduced. (See Related Story.)
The decentralized sewer industry, though still small, receives government support in terms of funding and a favorable regulatory outlook.
Decentralized sewer is set out in the federal 1994 Clean Water Act as one favorable alternative method nationwide to septic systems and municipal sewers that require discharge.
In a 1997 report to the U.S. Congress, the EPA identified decentralized systems as a cost effective option for meeting long-term public health and water quality needs and indicated proper management procedures are the key to the success of decentralized technology.
Aside from regulating the use of onsite systems through its policies, the state department of environment and conservation has also provided a financial boost to the decentralized movement, making a one-time contribution of $100,000 to aid in establishing the University of Tennessee?s Center for Decentralized Wastewater Management ? a figure that represented one-sixth of the center?s budget in its inaugural year.
In August 2002, TDEC along with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Tennessee Valley Authority and an industry group known as the Tennessee Onsite Wastewater Association (TOWA) helped fund the program and construct a state-of-the-art training facility in Spring Hill near the Saturn automotive plant. While the governmental entities provided financial support, TOWA donated time and materials to the effort.
Almost half of TDEC?s $100,000 contribution will go toward a second EPA grant awarded to the UT Center for Decentralized Water Management this year for the evaluation and demonstration of techniques for restoring failed onsite treatment systems.
As of this month, however, Buchanan said the center has yet to locate a failed system that would best lend itself to such a program.
?We?re going to have to find some systems that have failed and get the owners to agree to let us fix them as part of a demonstration. Ideally, what we?d like to find is some public property, like a school,? he said. ?If I had the perfect scenario for that, it would be a very rural public school.?
Should the center locate such a system, Buchanan noted the failure would likely be due to the age of the system or chemicals disposed of through the system such as bleach or other industrial cleaners.
Buchanan, who also serves as director of the UT center, described the department?s purpose as three-fold. The first ?mission,? he explained, was to provide training to onsite system technicians and engineers.
?The university calls that outreach, to go out and conduct outreach education,? Buchanan explained. ?The mission also included on-campus education for engineers and soil scientists and so on. Then, the third part of the mission is research ? to actually conduct applied research to advance the science of waste water renovation without taking it all the way to a central sewer system.?
So far, few students have completed the training program, and Buchanan is wrapping up his first semester as instructor of a class on decentralized sewer technology.
He conceded the program has gotten off to a slow start.
?As far as having a core group of folks who have been academically trained, no, we can?t really say that right now,? he said. ?But, we do have a good group of folks out in the industry now who are very competent in what they do and are very interested in seeing that the industry as a whole increases its education baseline.?
State agencies are aware of the residential growth tied to decentralized sewer.
David Owenby, director of the TDEC Public Information Office, explained the department has begun holding talks with other regulatory bodies within state government, namely the TRA, concerning the use of onsite technology and its implications.
?We?ve identified this growth, and we?re working with our partner agencies in how we can make sure that we continue to be protective of human health and the environment as these new technologies emerge,? Owenby said.
Staff Writer Brian Harville can be reached at 444-3952 ext. 16 or by e-mail at brian.harville@lebanondemocrat.com. |
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.jpg "Gallery of Homes")
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