Benefits To Community

There are many onsite technologies and management systems that can provide a lower-cost alternative to conventional sewers. These systems are appropriate for use in many small and rural communities and in environmentally sensitive areas. It is important for the protection of the public and environmental health for small communities, in particular, to recognize that proven technologies exist to collect and treat wastewater at a substantial cost savings when compared with conventional sewers. Having appropriate water and wastewater treatment infrastructure in place helps enable smaller communities to remain economically viable and provide jobs for their residents.

Demonstration projects, such as the NODP, provide unique learning experiences regarding the entire process involved in onsite technology and management system implementation, and thereby enable local officials and others in the community to make better informed decisions. While engineers, designers, planners and regulators are familiar with these systems in varying degrees, comparatively little attention is typically given to process factors that ultimately affect system performance within communities. These factors include community involvement, system performance goals, selection criteria, site suitability, operation and maintenance and system management.

This project offers a unique opportunity for selected communities throughout the country, with their own unique needs and characteristics, to implement appropriate onsite technologies and management systems using a guided process that is designed to maximize system performance and minimize costly mistakes in the implementation and operation of these systems. Additionally, this project endeavors to facilitate the wider adoption of onsite technologies and management systems by employing a diverse approach to the implementation of onsite systems that involves partnerships with state/regional organizations, regulators, national organizations and equipment manufacturers.

This project also employs a systematic approach to the decision-making process that ultimately impacts the performance of these systems. This decision-making process can serve as a model for other communities, and perhaps most importantly can act as a catalyst for appropriate regulatory reform within the states relative to the design and implementation of these systems. Such reform could lead to wider and more appropriate use of onsite systems and would thus increase the quality of these systems' performance. Wider use of onsite systems is desirable because of the estimated cost savings are significant when compared to conventional systems.

Barriers To Community

Barriers to Small and Rural Community Access to Essential Services
In addition to the lack of small and rural community access to basic wastewater collection and treatment services, there are cognitive and systemic barriers to the implementation of effective wastewater infrastructure in small and rural communities, such as:

• Lack of awareness on the part of small and rural communities of the severity of environmental, regulatory and infrastructure problems.
• Small and rural communities lack expertise and knowledge regarding water and waste disposal infrastructure.
• Lack of coordination among infrastructure players: federal agencies, state agencies, regulators, and consultants, who respectively establish compliance standards, enforce regulations, and who serve small communities by designing and implementing water and waste disposal technologies.

Responsibility for making and implementing environmental policies and programs is divided among the federal, state and local governments. For many small and rural communities there is little coordination between the three levels of government. Nor is there adequate coordination between government and the private sector. Additionally, little is known about what works and more importantly, what does not work in small and rural communities. Data on small communities is sparse and is collected infrequently, as compared with data collection on urban and metropolitan areas.