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Performance-based, environmentally sound, collaboratively developed, highly flexible, “cafeteria-style,” customizable, adaptable, and readily enforceable. These are among the concepts embodied by the “Model Performance Code for Decentralized Wastewater Infrastructure,” developed by a blue-ribbon panel of industry leaders and regulators under sponsorship of the National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association. After “a tremendous volunteer effort” encompassing thousands of hours and considerable resources, the basic work of drafting is nearly done, says Michael Corry, who chaired the project’s steering committee from its inception. Finishing touches are being added; earlier draft versions are already posted at NOWRA’s Web site; NOWRA’s board is expected to approve the final in March; and the membership will see the results at a formal presentation to the annual conference in August.
At nearly 100 pages in length, this omnibus guide reaches into every facet of onsite wastewater management: system design, sizing options, component parts, soil evaluation, professional services, maintenance standards, inspections, enforcement, improved system longevity, and even graywater reuse are all addressed, in many cases more extensively than has been previously been done. Here’s an overview showing how the new code promises to bring significant impact across the board.
How Industry, Regulators Gain
The new model should help do away with assorted long-standing inefficiencies, outmoded practices, and deep frustrations shared throughout the industry, experienced by industry participants, regulators and system owners alike. In place of the present hodgepodge of hundreds of varying local ordinances, the new code seeks to inaugurate something approaching national consistency and coherence—while also leaving room for a remarkable degree of local flexibility. The potential benefits for all participants should be tremendous.
Septic component manufacturers, for one, will no longer be required to campaign for product approval in hundreds of local jurisdictions requiring expensive, multi-year investment. Instead, redundant state and local testing protocols will be subsumed under nationally recognized certification tracks—UL, NSF Standard 40, IAPMO, and ETV. Once a product has run the gauntlet, it will be automatically listed as acceptable in every code jurisdiction that adopts the national code. Potentially enormous savings in time requirements and marketing costs will result; worthy new technologies will reach end-users far more rapidly, more widely and more affordably.
A second boon that the code provides: massively better product data. Under NOWRA’s plan, the onsite industry will collaborate with regulators to establish dynamic, real-time database logging of system component performance. System designers will be better able to specify the very optimum choice for a given application, with full confidence that it will perform. “It’s going to be,” Corry explains, “sort of a ‘living thing.’ A database of treatment components performance capability that can be directly measured.” For example, septic tanks would be evaluated for water tightness and structural integrity. The performance of pretreatment units will be classified based on data generated by test center and field evaluation programs. The quality of the submitted data will be evaluated, with third-party data collected under accepted protocols given the most credence. Corry says: “We’re talking about huge amounts of data, I think. That would be the hope.”
For the regulatory community, he adds, the resulting database “would provide a way to assess the effectiveness and the uniformity of treatment from a particular component that might be proposed for a wastewater system.” Although the administrative specifics haven’t been worked out yet, Corry and the other code authors (numbering dozens of participants) envision that it will be readily accessible and updatable by regulators, industry participants, and parts manufacturers.
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Similar standards, oversight and watch-dogging will apply, to some degree, to people as well. Under the NOWRA model, septic system designers, installers, pumpers, and inspectors will be expected to obtain more structured education and training, leading to credentialing. The burden of licensure of various role-players will shift from the county to the state level; and states, in turn, are urged to recognize certification programs developed by national organizations such as NOWRA, NSF, the National Environmental Health Association, and others. Duplicative costs of multi-jurisdictional training and testing will be eliminated, at considerable savings in time and money.
The Building Codes Serve as a Model
NOWRA’s new code supplants two already existing national ones which haven’t been generally accepted by the industry, those being the International Code Council’s Private Sewage Disposal Code, and the National Fire Protection Association’s and Uniform Plumbing Code’s appendix on wastewater treatment. These, Corry explains, “are almost uniformly ignored by the onsite community, mainly because they’re written for building department audiences that either don’t regulate or don’t install wastewater treatment systems.”
All but two states, California and Michigan, have adopted state codes, and most of the code-equipped 48 states allow county-level modifications. Corry notes: “This results in hundreds of unique codes that need to be revised to allow the use of a new technology or treatment method. This ill serves the citizens who are forced to live with a failed system or are unable to build on their residential lot because a technology in use in the neighboring state has not been approved in their jurisdiction.”
In sum, the entire onsite regulatory model has long been in dire need of standardization, modernization, and of “getting real support,” says Corry—a former regulator himself. During his tenure chairing the Model Code project, Corry was also chief regulator for Wisconsin’s building codes. That state happens to be one of the few that regulate septic systems within building codes; more typically this occurs under health or environmental codes. The adoption of national model building codes by state and local governments is, says Corry, a much more appropriate role model, and this philosophy is now incorporated into NOWRA’s new code. NOWRA’s model for regulation is eminently more practicable, more flexible and revisable, he adds: “Building-code development is more collaborative where the industries and trades being regulated participate with the regulators in the development of the model code at the national level,” he says. Resulting codes “are written by people who actually use them.”
Another drawback of many current regs is the inherent conflict-of-interest arising when health and environmental departments conduct the site evaluation and also design the septic system. If the system later fails, the same regulators then come out and issue penalties. NOWRA’s Code Committee strongly opposed this practice, and the resulting code divides the design, construction and oversight functions in a manner more typical of other building codes.
Performance Model is Preferred
Moreover, he continues, health-and-environment-style prescriptive codes common in the industry pose several major deficiencies, compared to performance-based codes. For instance, prescriptive codes define the means of achieving an objective, thereby effectively barring other solutions, absent a code change. And changes can requires years or decades. (In Wisconsin, for example, “there was a 20-year gap between major revisions...” and one of almost 30 years in Ohio, he notes.) On the other hand, performance codes define the expected outcome of the process, thereby allowing design solutions that meet the objective—without the need for a code change.
Curry continues: “The onsite industry is well-suited to performance codes,” he says, “because treatment success are measurements such as parts per million nitrate.” However, he adds, under some prescriptive health codes, “No one knows how to answer the question of whether or not the approved designs were actually meeting this standard.”
In contrast, NOWRA’s performance-based code, he says, “develops a process for answering the ‘how-do-you-know?’ question,” and provides the needed administrative tools.
One difficulty in developing performance standards like NOWRA’s, is the idea that “a single performance standard applied statewide is appropriate—in the face of highly varied risk conditions across the state,” he says. Moreover, stakes are often high, so that the ensuing struggle among competitors can be fierce and destructive. To overcome this aspect, NOWRA’s model allows a kind of multiple-choice set of solutions. There isn’t necessarily just one right answer, but rather, he explains, “there are many levels of treatment which may be satisfactory, depending on the local environment and context.”
Finally, most state regs pay too little attention to system operation after it’s built; a significant number then fail or malfunction, without being corrected by a rational oversight process. Corry notes: “We often hear that 10% to 20% of systems are failing at any time. But this actually represents the accumulation of uncorrected system failures that develop over time, because of lack of inspection and failure of enforcement programs.” Performance codes, by definition, continue to emphasize system output; there’s a natural follow-through from design to construction and operation.
Flexible, Yet Consistent
Another advantage anticipated in the NOWRA model will be the ease of localizing and customizing its provisions. This is somewhat paradoxical, perhaps, because the new code also strives for a high level of consistency and standardization.
Task group member Anthony Smithson amplifies. The NOWRA model, he says, “provides a framework for regulatory authorities, whether they be states or counties, to select from a menu of options... to pick and choose those things that they feel are most important.” Instead of presenting regulators with prescriptions, the model offers “informed choices.” Very few outright prohibitions are included, he adds. Hence, “ultimately, it becomes what the regulatory authority wants it to be.”
By contrast, many current statewide regulations set effluent standards on the theory that “one size fits all.” NOWRA’s model makes the determination much more sensitive to specific environmental conditions, and provides for localized risk-assessment
To resolve each regulatory issue, the code typically offers not just one, but four options, and includes an informative discussion. “It suggest that some choices are more appropriate in certain environments, and others more appropriate in another,” Smithson says. For example, systems for suburban fringe areas or coastal estuaries would likely encounter different environmental considerations than those in rural areas. “The idea,” he says, “is to allow flexibility to address local conditions and to let local policy makers decide how they want to address those conditions,” while still retaining the central regulatory administration at the state level.
To ensure that these limits aren’t reaching to unnecessary extremes, a cost-benefit analysis can be incorporated.
Such provisions should result, he says, in much stronger buy-in from all parties. By appreciating the logic, scientific basis, and transparency of the standard-setting process, all interest-groups will be in synch regarding follow-through. All community stakeholders, including environmentalists and citizens, can participate. There’s a rational process built-in for determining what’s needed in an area, and why.
As a control on local leeway, however, the code also includes provisions for septic plan review.
Smithson, who is director of environmental health services for the Lake County (IL) Health Department, assumed the steering committee chair from Corry in mid-2005. He has also chaired the onsite wastewater section for the National Environmental Health Association NEHA. Having experienced these varied perspectives, he says, has provided him “a good link to the regulatory community, which ultimately will have to embrace the model code.”
Making Regulatory Life Easier
Considering all that the NOWRA model proposes and promises, states should eagerly embrace it, Corry and Smithson believe. For their regulatory peers, the laborious task of standard-writing has basically now been done. “You don’t have to figure this all out by yourself,” Corry tells them. “Someone you trust has done a lot of the work for you. And also, when you go to your legislature and say, ‘We want to propose this,’ you’re not there alone with them: You’ve got a whole national organization and groups that have thought this through and are supporting it.”
Locally, the code-revision process should become much less politicized, Corry suggests, because transparency and stakeholder involvement are built-in. Onside septic codes will thus be much less likely to employed as tools of back-door zoning policy. Standard-setting will be less likely to be swayed by vocal, agenda-driven interest groups. Amendment to the code can be locally initiated in an orderly process—as often becomes necessary over time, as local environmental conditions change. A standard which is no longer justifiable at one level can more easily be revoked, tweaked, ignored, or enforce more selectively as conditions warrant. Corry observers: “If the cost is too high for an unproven level of protection, this can easily be changed.” Conversely, if stricter performance standards become warranted for public safety, the cost-benefit analysis provisions in the code should help spur public understanding and acceptance.
Past disparities and unsatisfactory code enforcement should be improved under the code, for several reasons.
First, notes Smithson, there’s a reduction in the adversarial aspect of septic oversight and enforcement. “Stakeholder groups [at the code-determining stage] might now include the regulatory authority,” he says, i.e., “the health department, stormwater management, environmental groups ... and the potential enforcement pathway” as well. In Illinois, for example (Smithson’s state) the state’s attorney would be a participant. “One of the things we don’t want to do,” he says, “is put into place requirements for which the political will is not in place to follow up on.”
Local regulations will be inherently more reasonably devised, and thus more politically supportable in the first place, he adds. Everyone will be starting on the same page, with a better mutual understanding of the code’s provisions and rationale
And finally, resources will tend to focus less on enforcement “and more on enabling people to comply,” Smithson says, adding: “The concept embodied in any performance code is that there will be ongoing management of the system, and that problems will be identified before they’re catastrophic. And so the effort is to keep the system in compliance with whatever the performance expectation is.” Enforcement only becomes necessary, he says, “when an owner refuses to address whatever needs to be done to keep the system in compliance.”
Most regulatory agencies are understaffed, but under the new code, much system oversight—e.g., plan reviewing, construction inspection, and maintenance tracking— will be shouldered by better-trained, certified private-sector personnel working under regulatory purview. “So,” he concludes, “it’s going to be a big shift.”
The Code as a Knowledge Base
Besides the foregoing, the model also provides regulators with instructions on its use; includes model authorizing ordinances and a statutes checklist; explains what the code provisions aim to achieve; includes supportive technical guidance regarding soil treatment component calculations (often critical to outcomes); offers numeric performance matrices that classify treatment components by measures of system output and output variability; gives narrative performance provisions as QA requirements, to assure that output variability remains within acceptable ranges; and suggests management practices to implement in support of seven treatment measures (i.e., fecal coliform; total nitrogen; nitrates; total phosphorus; BOD 5; total suspended solids; and pH). “One of the model’s biggest benefits ,” Corry sums up, “will be as a well-founded reference document.”
“Tech support” and assorted scientific knowledge are also included in the code and several appendices. These should help designers improve, for example, in more accurately estimating wastewater flows and sizing of drain fields, both of which have often been assessed erroneously in the past, under outdated formulas. A more up-to-date discussion on soil assessment methods will add significantly to the body of knowledge in this critical field. A lengthy appendix examines and explains septic tank manufacturing standards, offering guidance on using a range of post-installation leak testing methods. There’s even a “don’t flush” list to serve as a kind of universal “owner’s manual.”
Benefiting most of all from NOWRA’s model will be septic system owners themselves. Under the new code’s stated goals, they will receive high-quality service and stronger assistance; more reliable system components; longer-lived systems; and a better sense of their own role in system operation.
Implementation Getting Under Way
When will the new code begin to take effect, and where?
Actually, Corry says, the code-development effort “has been going on so long, and has already produced so many documents,” that, “in many respects the ideas being presented in the model code are already being implemented in various codes around the country.” Even so, there’s lots of work and planning being done to move the project ahead. A kind of lobbying effort is anticipated and already under way in some areas, under auspices of state NOWRA chapters. Corry foresees the creation of more state-level organizations, and improvement of advocacy skills. NOWRA leadership has also been conferring with state regulatory agencies for a couple of years already. The US Environmental Protection Agency has provided NOWRA a modest grant for local lobbying on the code’s behalf.
In some ways, suggests Smithson, the new code will almost sell itself, as regulators begin to appreciate what it does for them. “Flexibility is probably the most unique thing about this,” he says, “I’m not sure that we’ve fully communicated to the regulatory community just how flexible this framework is going to be.”
NOWRA president-elect Jerry Stonebridge will assume office in August, at about the time the rollout will occur. He’ll have a major part in launching the model code on its way. “During my tenure,” he says, “hopefully we can get a good plan and strategy together— and then move it forward.”
Corry envisions that, “The deployment of the regulatory ideas and tools in the model code documents will take time and effort by all segments of the industry.” Regulatory bodies often suffer from “huge reserves of inertia,” he observes. This will need to be overcome, “even when the regulatory agency itself is pushing for code changes.” Sub-groups, both within and without, “are vested in the status quo.” For NOWRA to overcome this, its state associations will need to take leadership roles and team up with progressive regulators.
“The people involved in developing the more efficient and effective building regulatory systems,” he sums up, “are no smarter that those involved in the onsite industry; they just started reforming their regulatory structure decades earlier. The system of national model building codes, standards and evaluation programs serve as an excellent model for the onsite industry to copy.”
Writer DAVID ENGLE specializes in construction-related topics.
OW - March/April 2006 |
