CHATHAM OFFICIALS PUSH ON WITH MOST EXPENSIVE SEWER ON CAPE COD
Despite the repeated urging, pleading even, of Chatham Concerned Taxpayers, Chatham town officials have to this point refused to even look at methods to clean up the coastal waters at far less cost to taxpayers than what they are planning.
Even though alternatives to the conventional, hugely expensive centralized sewer system used in densely populated big cities exist and can do the job just as well at far less cost, Chatham officials seem determined to spend at least $300 milliion of taxpayer money to install a townwide sewer system. For a town with about 6,500 residents, this has to be the most expensive sewer on Cape Cod.
It is not clear who decided to plan for a centralized sewer system that will cover the entire town when it isn't needed to solve the environmental problem that was the reason for starting the process in the first place.
There has been no town meeting vote to plan to spend $340 million to sewer the entire town.
There has been no town meeting vote to plan to spend $240 million to clean up the coastal waters rather than spend far less to solve the problem.
Surveys indicate Chatham taxpayers could save as much as $100 million (of the $240 million) in cleaning up their coastal waters, but the selectmen and town manager refuse to even consider these cost effective alternatives.
Whaat about the fiduciary duty to spend taxpayer money wisely?
The time has come to ask the DEP where Title 5 has failed and what makes them so sure that moving sewage to a huge central sewage plant would reduce the nitrogen in the embayments.
It is a shame to have abandoned working septic systems, spending $60,000.00 +/- per residence plus the additional maintenance and operating expense only to find out that once again the Dictator DEP has misled the public.
The Nitrogen contribution to the Embayments, from Septic Systems, is vastly overstated and the billions of dollars spent will likely show NO or little improvement.
Bob
Yes it must be much cheaper to have 10 or 15 sewer treatment plants all around our lovely town and next to our homes instead of the current one. Great idea!
Unfortunately, you have it right. Billions have been spent on Chesapeake Bay and the effort has failed. A study of nitrogen contribution to Pleasant Bay shows that all the septic systems ringing the bay ony contribute 1% to the total nitrogen in the bay. Spending hundreds of millions on a centralized sewer system will have no effect on water quality, but a devastating effect on town budgets.
The DEP and its county enablers at the Cape Cod Water Protection Collaborative don't care what the costs to taxpayers are. Their interest is in preserving and expanding their bureaucratic power and control.
The Town of Orleans has initiated an effort to get the National Academy of Sciences to do a "peer review" of the science and methodology behind the DEP's numbers. Orleans has asked other Cape towns to join with them. So far, seven or eight have. So far, Chatham has not.
Replacing your Septic Systems currently in use with central wastewater treatment plants, torn up streets, billions in up front expenditures, loss of independence and exhorbinant monthly or quarterly charges for a service you can handle yourself, is not acceptable. Any reduction in nitrogen from individual Septic Systems will be lost and more than offset from the onslaught of new dwellings and infrastructure that central sewers would bring.
Forgotten in the MA DEP studies is the effect of Marine life on the nitrogen component. The estimated combined weight of all marine fish is at least eight times (800,000,000 metric tonnes) that of all human beings on the globe (100,000,000 metric tonnes). Is it possible that the migration and movements of marine life have resulted in more usage of the embayments to do their regular excrement depletion? Excrement from fish contain significant concentrations of nitrogen/ammonia (highly bioactive nitrogen).
Good Day .........