Distributed Infrastructure Could Aid Watershed Management

Craig Lindell

In this column in March, WWEMA cited value-based procurement, the ability of communities to afford and sustain infrastructure investments, and preserving the SRF program to maintain market stability as ways to extend the Water Infrastructure Network's (WIN) search for prudent reform.

However, "new solutionsellipsein critical water and wastewater investments" and an "institutional framework to support watershed management" remain to be structured and realized. The opportunity to achieve this framework lies dormant in the potential of a distributed, performance-based infrastructure for wastewater and storm water management.

This potential to improve water quality nationally is immense, but tragically illusive. Some watershed management plans have been abandoned because of the lack of an implementation authority beyond the point source permit program. Similarly, public health professionals are increasingly aware that public health codes are often an obstacle to the watershed agenda.

One 1999 WEFTEC Conference participant observed, "while regulatory authorities promote movement away from a command and control agenda, their structure remains command and control and this restricts the ability to form consensus." He went on to conclude that, "the EPA, DNR, USDA and those concerned with state health can't cooperate sufficientlyellipse"

This is not about the life of institutions. The WIN report correctly understands that it is about water quality and the integrity of natural systems on which our economic and national security depend. We cannot afford these discontinuities and failures.

The conditions pressing us to reform are dramatic. The EPA estimates that 25% of housing units are served by onsite wastewater treatment and that approximately 41% of new residential construction is being built with onsite systems. Corresponding commercial development is virtually ignored by the onsite codes.

Despite the success of the NPDES program, the "percentage of rivers designated as 'impaired' has grown from 26% in 1986 to 36% in most recent years" (US News and World Report). One study suggests that the estimated resale dollars lost on homes near polluted rivers and lakes are $5 billion annually. (Schrader and Frechette)

There are also emerging priorities that must be realistically considered if new solutions are to be effective. Among them are nonpoint pollution and TMDL compliance standards as well as the emerging civic agenda for community preservation, "smart" and "green" growth and watershed management. These realities and related efforts, such as land preservation, conservation design for subdivisions and the economics of natural systems services, provide immense opportunities for affordable reform.

Georgia's Governor Barnes spoke to the political reality of these issues in the Southeast. "Someone has to decide how to build more infrastructure to handle the fast growing countiesellipsethat are starving for it. ellipseBut addressing water quality issues in already developed parts of the region ...also is an imperative."

The EPA has expressed its own sense of urgency: "We must quickly and practically establish flexible, targeted, iterative approaches to achieve and maintain beneficial uses of water." The agency has also endorsed decentralized wastewater treatment as a goal of the Clean Water Action Plan and considers it a permanent long-term solution, to be evaluated on the same basis as traditional sewer.

Local communities, counties and watershed interests are increasingly aware that the real wastewater issues are politically and economically charged public policy issues that are of primary interest to the general public, such as property values, water quality, timely economic development, "Green Growth" and the preservation of recreational and natural resources.

Consider the real wastewater issues- the economic and security interests- and the costs of failing to build a distributed performance-based infrastructure to support watershed management may well be higher than the costs of building it.

Nevertheless, adequate funding, meaningful innovation, a framework for watershed management and the sense of urgency remain unrealized.

In what may prove to be a prophetic, Larry Selzer of the National Forum for Nonpoint Source Pollution outlined the "origins of a watershed framework for conservation." It would be "community based,ellipsetechnology-drivenellipse It would be led by the non-profit and private sectors and not by government." It would be the result of "collaboration and not confrontation," and it would "fully integrate economic reality into environmental protectionellipse"

Ed Corriveau of the Pennsylvania DEP, like Selzer, sees the capacity to develop an affordable infrastructure emerging at the local level. "There are no major obstacles to a decentralized infrastructure for wastewater management ellipse In fact new technologies, in a properly managed context, provide the opportunity for a land based watershed initiative that could significantly reduce small flow point source discharges," he said.

Selzer and Corriveau are integrating the emerging priorities and seeing new possibilities. This is not so much reform as it is responsible re-conceptualization.

The WIN report asks us to consider the network benefits in the sewer infrastructure to be similar to those of the highway system. The more generic and complete the network, the more substantial the services.

The Selzer/Corriveau perspective suggests that the network benefits are more like those of a computer network. The more diverse and site specific the processing functions the more affordable and productive its performance. Just as we have enhanced main frame computers with distributed information systems that locate processing power where it is needed in a centrally managed network; so too will we distribute our wastewater and storm water treatment.

In the distinction lies the opportunity. The highway analogy assumes cost increases. The computer analogy suggests affordable costs to meet watershed compliance standards.

A distributed infrastructure would be an adjunct to, and not a replacement of, the existing infrastructure. This infrastructure would include clustered, performance-based, wastewater management systems, distributed or networked sewer, industrial and commercial pre-treatment, as well as water reuse systems and wastewater-to-process water loops.

Within this context it is arguable that a distributed infrastructure properly enabled by government and responsibly constructed by the private sector may not only be economically affordable. It may actually have the potential to pay for itself through accelerated returns on investment and asset appreciation.

While this opportunity is slowly revealing itself, nothing of consequence has been accomplished, in terms of enabling legislation and institutional reform, to release its full potential.

If we pursue Corriveau's thinking and incorporate "decentralized wastewater treatment" as "distributed sewer," moving it from the onsite health codes into a utility framework, the sewer codes begin to service the watershed agenda. If we think of converting "Water Pollution Control Authority" to a nonprofit "Watershed Pollution Control Agency" we may be able to introduce a responsible entity to support current regulatory authorities. And if we empower this approach with "Green Tier" or "Environmental Results" incentives to support localized watershed initiatives, we may be on our way to institutionally realizing the vision of the National Forum For Nonpoint Source Pollution and developing a "consistent voice for the water resource."

About the Author:

Craig Lindell is a founder and President of AWT Environmental Inc. dba/Aquapoint. He is a technical advisor to the Board of Directors of the Coalition for Buzzards Bay, a National Estuaries Program. He serves on the Water Environment Federation's Small Communities Committee and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers' Association.