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ONSITE WASTEWATER SYSTEMS: HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Citation:
Kreissl*, J F. ONSITE WASTEWATER SYSTEMS: HOW DID WE GET HERE? Presented at Ninth National Symposium on Individual and Small Community Sewage systems, Fort Worth, TX, 3/11-14/2001.
Description:
This paper chronicles the history of onsite wastewater treatment over more than a Century in the US. The major research programs which came into existence since World War II have each contributed some advancement to certain facets of the answers to a relatively stable set of questions which have been posed over that 50-year span of time. The present status of the onsite/decentralized wastewater systems field appears to be very promising in terms of the potential to advance the dialogue due to breadth of the approaches underway. These ongoing efforts deal with regulatory reform, centralized management approaches which are dictated by the technologies, incorporation of decentralized systems into university and field training program curricula, and investigation of the fate and transport of pollutants through introduction of treated wastewater at the site and their impact on the watershed, as opposed to the more traditional technology-only response.