Clean Water, Sewers, and Septic Systems

Has Good Wastewater Infrastructure Planning Gone Down the Drain?

By Jordan Friedberg, Planner, PlanSmart NJ

The Clean Water Act provided the foundation for ensuring an adequate water supply for every community.  Today, misguided legislation and a new slate of proposed government regulations could inadvertently pose a threat to water quality.  At issue: how can New Jersey grow without threatening the state’s precious environmental resources?

The wastewater rules currently being proposed by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection are designed to protect land from sewers, instead of development.  The likely result? A landscape covered in low-density sprawl.  PlanSmart NJ believes state investment in water and sewer infrastructure must be made in a way that supports economic growth in appropriate areas, while protecting and improving water resources by reducing sprawl in non-growth areas.  Smart growth is the cornerstone of this strategy and PlanSmart NJ has developed some important guidelines to better plan for clean water statewide.

• Take a Coordinated Approach: Water and wastewater planning must take into account state goals to protect and improve the environment. We need to continue to invest in saving open space, since this has such a dramatic impact on water quality.  Also, since wastewater treatment plants use a significant amount of energy, any investment in these facilities must be mindful of energy demands, greenhouse gas reduction and air quality goals.  In addition, we need to better coordinate state funding to support the cleanup of brownfield sites and other redevelopment plans to improve water quality in growth areas before investing in new capacity outside of centers in sprawling rural areas.

• Fix What’s Broken First: Currently, many of NJ’s older areas lack the financial resources to deal with wastewater systems that are overstressed or inefficient.  Government policy helped to create these facilities and should not stand in the way of cleaning them up.  However, some regulations prevent upgrades or expansions in these areas, which prevent problems from ever getting fixed and perpetuate poor water quality.  Fixing the state’s broken older wastewater systems must be a top priority for the state.

• Develop More Creative Wastewater Treatment Options:  One size does not fit all, and alternatives to the sewer-versus-septic choice need to be more fully explored.  New technologies, clustered development, conservation zoning, lot averaging, and the Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) all provide ways to grow while protecting water resources.

• Watershed Data Collection:  If we really want to protect NJ’s water quality, it is essential that we collect and monitor data based on watersheds. This connects the planning to the resource directly. To do this, we need to standardize build-out methods for stormwater and wastewater. We also need to use HUC14 data since HUC 11’s are too big to give us a meaningful look at local conditions and they also allow for too much local pollution.

For more information, please visit PlanSmart NJ’s website: www.plansmartnj.org.   PlanSmart NJ is the state’s oldest and largest land use research and advocacy organization.  Founded in 1968 and based in Trenton, PlanSmart NJ is a 501 (c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.