Waste-water and families

By Amy Dain
June 9th, 2008

The state’s Title 5 regulations limit the capacity of shared/common septic systems to 10,000 gallons per day. At today’s panel discussion on affordable housing and septic systems hosted by CHAPA, developer Russ Tanner argued that this limit discourages family housing.

He’s built several 40B projects that just meet the 10,000 gallon limit. Since flow for septic system design is calculated based on the number of bedrooms, he said that he can build 44 units with 2 bedrooms each before hitting the 10,000 gallon threshold. Beyond 10,000 gallons, he would have to put in a waste water treatment plant which is much more expensive (and may be a lightening rod for local opposition to a project). The limit discourages family housing because if he made any of the units 3-bedrooms, then he would not be able to build as many units.

Tanner suggested that DEP should have discretion to allow shared/common systems with a capacity a little higher than 10,000 gallons. These systems would still have far more oversight than the single-home septic systems that serve many of our suburban residents, although they would have less oversight than waste water treatment plants.

With the limit set higher than 10k gallons, though, developers might just add more 2-bedroom units…