01-10-2019, 04:32 PM
"While a septic tank is better, well.. it just isn't good enough. You'll just have to sacrifice, for the future generations need to drink, and don't want to drink your septic tank leach.
The only honorable, environment-respecting thing to do is level the house, dig up the septic, have the leach field sterilized, and move to an area with real sewerage treatment".
This may be sarcasm and I'm too tired to see it but just in case, I respectfully disagree. There is nothing magic about a wastewater treatment plant. It attempts to and largely succeeds at doing exactly what a septic tank and leach field do only for lots more wastewater in lots less space. It does so by using infinitely more energy (a septic tank/leach field system uses none) and more chemicals (chlorine for one just before discharge into the ocean). Sometimes it fails and bypasses raw sewage into the ocean or other body of water. Even when working properly it discharges treated wastewater into those same bodies of water. There are places in the world where water is drawn from a river upstream from a town, treated to drinking water quality, goes "through" the town (cough, cough), is treated at a wastewater treatment plant and discharged into the river downstream of the town, and finishes the cleansing process in the river on the way to the next town where the process is repeated. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the various process limits are respected.
We are all drinking dino-pee anyway. Everything is relative.
The thing about climate change is that the changes are so slow that future generations can just think "There goes gramps, talking about when it "used to snow" here in Minnesota".
The only honorable, environment-respecting thing to do is level the house, dig up the septic, have the leach field sterilized, and move to an area with real sewerage treatment".
This may be sarcasm and I'm too tired to see it but just in case, I respectfully disagree. There is nothing magic about a wastewater treatment plant. It attempts to and largely succeeds at doing exactly what a septic tank and leach field do only for lots more wastewater in lots less space. It does so by using infinitely more energy (a septic tank/leach field system uses none) and more chemicals (chlorine for one just before discharge into the ocean). Sometimes it fails and bypasses raw sewage into the ocean or other body of water. Even when working properly it discharges treated wastewater into those same bodies of water. There are places in the world where water is drawn from a river upstream from a town, treated to drinking water quality, goes "through" the town (cough, cough), is treated at a wastewater treatment plant and discharged into the river downstream of the town, and finishes the cleansing process in the river on the way to the next town where the process is repeated. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the various process limits are respected.
We are all drinking dino-pee anyway. Everything is relative.
The thing about climate change is that the changes are so slow that future generations can just think "There goes gramps, talking about when it "used to snow" here in Minnesota".