Plumbing Connection recently caught up with a council spokesperson to uncover the hidden problems currently associated with onsite wastewater management – particularly in rural areas around the country.

There is a steady stream of people building or renovating houses in unsewered areas to improve their situation. In fact, there is a massive backlog of septic tank repair work and maintenance to be undertaken when the right technical guidelines, technologies, trades people and professionals are in place; however, at the
moment there are lots of mistakes being made. It isn’t the products at fault either – it is the mistakes being made with the assessment and installation of these
products that plumbers need to have their attention drawn to.

The State agencies are holding up the exploration and development of many onsite wastewater technologies for new installation. Unfortunately there is very little advice on the remedies needed to tackle the many problems associated with aging systems. Many residents will not voluntarily upgrade their systems because they claim they cannot aff ord EPA approved systems that they often, correctly perceive as not working, so they take matters into their own hands.

For plumbers, there is an enormous amount to learn about the service they are providing, not only the customers but also for the surrounding neighbours and whole water catchments.

CASE STUDY: RURAL VICTORIA
How would you feel if the accompanying photo/s reflected your new house site – a wastewater system failing and damaged before you have even moved into the
house?

A plumber’s compliance certificate and treatment plant commissioning certificate had been provided to Council so one last look was organised as a final inspection. The industry professionals, who certify the system as complete and functional, sometimes get it wrong.

You might notice the subsurface drip irrigation pipe trenches seem to have not been backfilled properly. Imagine trying to run a lawn mower over this 400sq/m of lawn with wet channels in it like this. The plumber thought they backfilled these trenches correctly but they were not aware that dispersive clay soils totally lose their structure on contact with water – in some cases they sink while in others, they dissolve.

The site was so flat that water entering any of these trenches flowed along the filled ground on the outside of all the pipes in every direction along the interconnected trenches and eventually back towards the treatment plant and pumpwell. These chambers did not appear to be water tight because water could be heard running into the pumpwell while there was still no occupancy of the house.

The problem was made worse because a nearby water tank set up to take all the water from the house roof not being constructed with an overfl ow pipe to a legal
point of discharge from the property. Owners sometimes try do work themselves to save money but this often backfires. The full water tank spilled onto the ground around the tank, along with the shed roof run-off . The water subsequently fl owed over to the treatment plant via the loose clay fill around the pipes and also ran across the driveway.

This stormwater mixed with the water running out into the network of irrigation trenches where more soil was dissolving. Subsequent events are yet to be substantiated but the following assumption appears to be a possible explanation for the missing soil. Leaks in the septic tank, treatment plant or pumpwell caused the water level to rise and the pump started causing continuous re-circulation of water out to the trenches where it dissolved more soil and flowed the soil back along the outside of the pipes andleaked it back into the treatment plant or pumpwell. This would appear to explain the removal of such large amounts of soil from the irrigation pipe trenches. This missing soil is expected to be found all through the treatment plant and pumpwell where it may have prematurely caused blockages in irrigation pipes, damage to drippers, unnecessary pump wear and wasted electricity.

THE BIGGER PICTURE
The site is very wet and any works may have to be carried out by hand. Occupancy of the house could potentially be delayed by many weeks. There is the
additional cost of not just backfilling all of the trenches but also adding 100mm of soil over the whole 400sq/m of irrigation area. This is all an effort to try and divert surface water. Imagine the effect of also adding wastewater to all the rainwater on this soil day after day as well. Who is going to have to pay for all these additional works and disruptions? The worst part is; it was totally preventable.

A few questions must be asked:

• How could so many people make such wrong decisions and how could their training and the documents they rely upon also be so wrong?
• How could it be that a plumber, land capability assessor and earlier Environmental Health Officer issuing the permit make so many mistakes?
• Why is there no apparent mechanism to learn from these mistakes?
• Sometimes things will go wrong but why is the Environmental Health Officer and the EPA not equipped with the simple submersible electronic probes needed to diagnose what might have gone wrong and how problems like these might be prevented in the future?

The same devices could reassure us when systems also operate correctly and enable enhancements to be tested as well.

It gets worse. Even when all these issues are overcome and the resident moves into the house, problems continue…

Every three months a plumber will have to service the treatment plant and every year a laboratory will have to come and take a water sample to comply with the EPA requirements. Unfortunately, the chances of the sample complying with the EPA requirements seem extremely low if several decades of sampling are to be believed. Sometimes even with the aerators and pumps running continuously 24 hours a day, the water quality may not comply. Consequently these will use more electricity and wear out more quickly and need replacement every few years.

If treatment is not being delivered then Council is put in a difficult enforcement situation and warranties in the 400sq/m of irrigation pipe might be void and the system could block. In some situations schedule 5 poison needs flushing through the pipes to keep them clear of biological growth in this household backyard. Desludging of the septic tank is needed every three years.

If climate change continues and there is less rain at greater intervals over the summer then much of the lawn is going to die and to keep this area green, which
is the expectation of the resident, is going to cost many hundreds of dollars in excess town water bills or many thousands of dollars in extra water tanks. Residents purchased these expensive systems because they thought they were recycling water as well as being environmentally friendly. Nobody explained that in reality the wastewater would have to be dispersed so greatly to comply with EPA requirements that this benefit of garden watering with recycled water would be hardly noticeable.

To make matters even worse, this unsewered estate is likely to be surrounded by new sewered estates in the future. At any time the owners could be asked to scrap their septic tank systems and install a large grinder pump station and pump to town sewer. If the new house owners knew what the real costs were going to be perhaps they would made a different decision.

Residents and their elected representatives must be provided with the reliable information and costs needed to make a properly informed and strategic decisions. That is where the core problem lies. At the moment we do not know the real costs of all reliable solutions and repairs because the EPA is not providing appropriate guidance on the options and the monitoring equipment is not being made available to officers in the field. This information is essential for Council’s
to be able to accurately prepare Domestic Wastewater Management Plans. Forcing Councillors to make sweeping decisions in Domestic Wastewater Management Plans on behalf of residents with insufficient information is often ends in no decisions being made which inevitably creates more problems.

Forcing residents to make such important, personal and permanent public health and environmental decisions without the proper advice from industry professionals is inexcusable. Until better advice is provided then residents are going to have to make guesses based on unreliable information and the more that people invest in technology that is not appropriate, the harder it is to improve the neighbourhood and turn the tide of decay. The many old septic tank systems that need repair are being delayed because of all the uncertainty about need or not for town sewer.

The following things need to happen:

1. CLARIFY THE SCIENCE
We have to get the science right or it undermines confidence in education and all levels of service delivery by all industry and authority stakeholder. It also creates an unnecessary liability and enforcement mess. It does not have to be complicated and the test of good communication materials is whether it can be understood by everyone – including children.

Example: The EPA does not have guidelines to outline what to do on fl at dispersive clays and in fact the recommended methods in the Australian Standards are expressly prohibited in Victoria by the EPA, for no apparent reason. The EPA does not support practical research into ways to minimise the risk and harm or ways of working out why some systems work and others fail in apparently identical situations. The technology and some very simple electronic evaluation techniques exist but the EPA is not supporting this practical exploration. Instead, potentially good systems are sometimes thrown out and new potential disasters
introduced and unleashed on the industry, the public and the environment without the right electronic checks and balances. Many of these systems are put in high risk and sensitive situations and failure could be very serious.

2. REALISTIC BEST PRACTICE AND CLEAR LEGAL FRAMEWORKS
When the science is clear and known, the realistic and achievable legal targets can also be set clearly.
Example: There is a need for a clear definition of “acceptable onsite containment” and “emergency storagecapacity” (not just vague mention of it across several
contradictory and outdated documents).

3. RE-EDUCATION BUILT ON CLEAR SCIENCE & CLEAR LEGAL FRAMEWORKS
Once practical scientific and legal frameworks exist then the technical diagrams and 3 dimensional presentations can be created to educate all in the industry and the authorities.
Example: Via educational bodies such as Plumbing Industry Climate Action Centre, it is possible to educate regarding new technology and legal structures. Social media and computer aided design and assessment tools also assist in these processes.

4. TAKE ON BOARD FEEDBACK, REVIEW AND REPEAT PROCESS WHERE NECESSARY
This is an ongoing process and some steps are going to take a while to properly plan or more mistakes will be made. Example: New types of trenches that store, transpire, evaporate and only then deep infiltrate excess wastewater need to be developed.

Best practice has shifted to much broader and higher levels and is becoming vague. It is unclear what the minimum standards are and when to apply the precautionary principle for system design, assessment of development proposals and preparation of quotes.

Council Environmental Health Officers, and Private Land Capability Assessors and Plumbers need to know exactly where they stand. The whole industry need to know they have the right legal and technical support to justify some of these new changes and that support on these matters will be upheld in VCAT because these have big cost and development restriction implications, particularly if they are read literally and sometimes for no logical reason.

The old Septic Tank Code of Practice for Onsite Wastewater Management was one of EPA’s most popular and relied upon publications when it was in print and had good diagrams. The reason the Code went on line was so that it could be changed easily and quickly, however this does not seem to be occurring and it is not keeping up with the needs of its users. Now it is fragmented, contains even fewer diagrams, all while 3D drawings and animations are becoming common place in other fields to assist in education and ongoing communication.

This is a really irresponsible circumstance that is the creation of a State Authority. It creates awful problems for residents in small unsewered towns that have deteriorating infrastructure but equally as frustrating and devastating for affluent areas and on farms with cash flow problems. Authorities need to build stronger and reliable reputations in these situations and not abandon so many people and businesses when they need support. Public health and environmental issues are getting more difficult to manage now when technology and better communication should be making this easier. This whole mess is totally artificial and unnecessary.

LACK OF TRAINING & UNDERSTANDING
Many municipalities have been forced to prepare their own composites of old diagrams and guidelines to assist plumbers with clarifying minimum requirements. Even practitioners prepared to specialise and dedicate decades of their working lives to these problems are finding it really difficult to understand why such a mess is being pointlessly created.

Anyone starting out in the industry as a Land Capability Assessor, Plumber or Environmental Health Officer is only going to receive very limited training and be faced with incomplete and misleading documents, make lots of very expensive mistakes and learn the hard way because of a lack of adequate research and guidance at the State level. The State appears to be wrongly discarding potential solutions and setting up more problems for reasons that are totally unexplained, unscientific and unethical. Many residents are currently being delivered systems that are unnecessarily expensive to install, run and maintain. Many have serious operational problems and it is unclear how to resolve these or whether they can be resolved at all.

There needs to be smarter, computer added training provided that is so clear that even the residents can understand (if they want to) how their systems work.

FINAL WORD
Plumbing is not just about connecting pipes. Onsite wastewater systems connect people to soil and vegetation. We are going to have to get much smarter about how we manage water, energy and resources. The latest science is showing that the microbiology in the soil have to be considered as much as the type of soil when it comes to management of wastewater. Plants that are given wastewater and microbes in the right form and the right way use far less water. This has major implications for system design in winter but also for conserving water in summer. It also potentially shows up many of the problems with existing design computer models and what many old plumbers have found out the hard way and by their own observations.