The Rural Voice, 2002-12, Page 40Polk
We take it for granted:
a visit to the toilet
ends with a flush
and we forget it. But the
forgotten convenience of the
septic tank treatment of rural
waste is about to come much
more to the top of our minds
— and our pocket books.
Pray. for instance. that
between now and spring you
don't have any problem with
your septic tank that means it
has to be pumped out.
Enforcement of a prohibition
against winter spreading of the
"septage" pumped from septic
tanks on farm fields means
that you'll be hard-pressed to
find someone who can pump
out your tank. And if farmers
worry about the red tape and
inconvenience of dealing with
the Nutrient Management Act.
for septic tank pumping
contractors. a future banning
of spreading untreated septage
on fields means a revolution in
the business.
Recently the Ontario
Ministry of Environment'
Environmental SWAT team
reported to Bruce County
Council that nearly all septic .►1111.;'
tank pumping contractors
were not in compliance of their licences of operation, said
Chris Laforest. planner with the Bruce County Planning
Department. Some of the issues were relatively minor but a
major issue is lack of winter storage so that septage won't
be put on frozen land.
But the problem for haulers like Don Marshall of
Marshall's Septic Tank Pumping near Durham. is that
there's no point in making a major investment in storage
facilities now when the whole practice of land spreading
will be prohibited under the Nutrient Management Act in
five years. But currently there are few alternatives for
treatment of septage, so during the winter haulers are
virtually out of business.
Municipalities are starting to look at the issue. Gord
Eagles, in charge of two sewage treatment facilities for the
town of Saugeen Shores, serving Southampton and Port
Elgin, says providing an alternative to dumping on land is
not going to be as simple as dumping the truckloads of
material pumped from septic tanks into a municipal
treatment facility. The problem is the concentration of the
septage which has so much organic material, plus grease
and soap, that it could overwhelm the treatment system.
There needs to be some way to hold that septage to put it
into the treatment plant slowly, he says. For those
municipalities with lagoon treatment systems, it wouldn't
be recommended to put septage in at all.
Besides the technical complexities there's the political
Royally flushed
Enforcement of existing laws against
winter spreading and the new Nutrient
Management Act means the era of `flush
and forget" with your septic tank are
quickly ending.
«11.111111
By Keith Roulston
36 THE RURAL VOICE
issues, he says. In Bruce
County, for instance, waste
management is a municipal
issue but the problems of
septic tank pumping cross
borders. With lagoons ruled
out as possible recipients of
materials to be treated, there
are five secondary treatment
facilities left in the county,
meaning the majority of septic
tank residue would have to
cross municipal borders to find
treatment.
Marshall has already found
himself caught in the issue
with a business that spans
different municipalities in
Grey, Bruce and Wellington
Counties and some municipal
treatment facilities only
accepting material from their
own constituents.
Saugeen Shores has retained
the Goderich engineering firm
of B. M. Ross and Associates
to look at the issue and has
approached the county to
consider the problem on a
county -wide basis.
Steve Burns of B. M. Ross is
familiar with the issue. He
presented a report on possible
solutions to the October
meeting of Huron County
Council. Huron, because it took over authority for waste
management several years ago while seeking a solution to
landfill problems, was in a position to deal with the issue
on a county -wide basis. The issue first arose in Huron two
winters ago when those needing emergency pumping of
their septic tanks found they had no one to turn to after a
crackdown on winter spreading by the MOE. The problem
spurred the county to hire the engineer to study
alternatives, and put Huron in the forefront of the issue
across Ontario.
Burns met with waste haulers, studied the capacity of all
the waste treatment plants and calculated the costs of
renovating them to accept waste from haulers.
He found five plants have the capacity to accept waste:
those in Blyth, Brussels, Exeter, Goderich and Wingham.
The cheapest solution to the problem was to require all
waste to be taken to Goderich but Burns recommended a
more convenient proposal that is only slightly more
expensive: that the plants in Exeter and Wingham be
modified to handle the waste. It would cost more than $6.5
million to allow the plants to receive waste, including
adding pre-treatment facilities to the two plants because
material pumped from septic tanks is much more
concentrated than the normal effluent handled by sewage
treatment plants.
"Volume is not the issue," Burns said, noting that the
annual volume of septage from the county's 14,300