I was traveling recently, leaving my rural mountain and going through (and staying in) places ranging from small towns to suburbs to big cities. Since I’m currently dealing with the compound’s sewage processing systems, I find I cannot visit the bathroom in an airport or motel or suburban home without thinking about how the sewage is processed.
Waste disposal is probably one of the least appreciated bits of infrastructure, at least until it fails. It is also difficult to assess the impact of good sanitation. Of course, there are major diseases (typhoid, cholera, polio, parasites…) that have been controlled through good sanitation. As usual, too, there’s nuance: hookworm, for example, is associated with poor sanitation and poverty but it’s a two-way association. Not only do the conditions of poverty promote the spread of hookworm, but hookworm disease also directly contributes to poverty.
Twoprops’ compound is located in an area that generally has abundant water (though we’re currently experiencing a drought). Most folks can get by with catchment systems and get all the water they need from rainfall. We also have abundant sunshine and, thus, solar energy. Solar energy systems have become notably simpler and less expensive. We’ve established that we can get by without propane and other petrochemicals. The sewage, though, still needs to be dealt with. Our old cesspool won’t last forever (though, at over a century, it’s doing pretty well) and it’s on the highest part of the property so additional buildings will need their own disposal systems. Cesspools potentially contaminate groundwater supplies, though it isn’t clear how much of an issue that is where we are given the geology and emphasis on catchment for water sourcing. By federal mandate, though, the cesspool has to go away by 2050. And if we want bathrooms anywhere else on the property, they will need their own sewage disposal systems.
Septic tanks are the go-to around here, but they seem to me to be a poor solution. They’re expensive and disruptive to construct, and still have the potential to contaminate soil and groundwater. They really just kick the can down the road, as the need to vacuum pump them, transport the sludge using fossil fuels, and process the sewage elsewhere is an inevitability, so we’re back to a centralized infrastructure. The county does allow certain composting toilets, so that might be our best option going forward.
It’s a problem that must be solved because, as we all know, sewage happens.
—2p