Chatham selectmen, among other Cape Cod officials, keep warning that the Conservation Law Foundation will sue if they don't push ahead with their centralized sewer plans.

That's not true.

CLF was the major force behind the Boston Harbor clean-up solely using a centralized sewer system for the entire Greater Boston area that collected wastewater (and water from the water tables) and dumped it about nine miles out in Cape Cod Bay. As a consequence, Greater Boston reservoirs and streams today are experiencing smaller water flows.

What does CLF say today? Cape Cod towns should carefully look at low cost decentralized sewer systems and not be rushed into building big city-type sewer systems by municipal officials.

These quotes are from an article in the Cape Codder (Wicked Local Orleans) by Doreen Leggett on May 8, 2009:

Thinking small

If Conservation Law Foundation does sue, it won’t be to superimpose Boston Harbor’s solution on Cape Cod.

“The biggest lesson I learned from the Boston Harbor cleanup is we didn’t work hard enough to look at alternative approaches to wastewater,” said Peter Shelley, a vice president at CLF who was involved in the Boston Harbor suit.

Back then the idea of smaller treatment plants was floated, but a couple of factors were working against the idea.

“Because so much of the system had already been built, it was hard to imagine doing it any other way and reversing the engineering,” Shelley said.

The geology of the area also made it easy to move wastewater flow long distances via gravity relatively cheaply. Then there is human nature. People want their waste dumped in some other community rather than their own, Shelley said.

Because of groundwater seeping into the system, the big plant, big pipe solution is now taking clean water out of a number of ecosystems and putting it nine and half miles out into Massachusetts Bay. (Not to mention that ratepayers are spending money to treat clean water.)

Shelley also believes that replacing the plant in 10 to 15 years is going to turn out to be far more expensive than what it would have cost to update a series of smaller facilities.

CLF is turning away from sewers as the be-all, end-all solution. The conventional technology may have a place in some areas, but enhanced treatment at individual homes – with a utility that maintains them – and using the natural environment to remove nitrogen should be explored as well.

These methods are becoming mainstream in other parts of the country, but aren’t catching on here, Shelley said.

“DEP is very conservative,” he said. “The knee-jerk engineering answer is to sewer because it’s known technology.

“Our interest on the Cape is that these other approaches are considered and that residents aren’t rushed into things by municipal officials who tend to be very risk averse,” Shelley said.

CLF readily admits that the Cape’s problem isn’t as noticeable as Boston Harbor’s.

“The damage to the Cape environment is different … you have a chronic, escalating problem of eutrophication,” Shelley said. “It’s not quite as dramatic as a turd on the beach.”

Still it’s pollution that is strangling the Cape, and through a lawsuit CLF may not only prompt the peninsula to address its wastewater conundrum; it may also gain influence so it can help fashion a comprehensive plan.

“How do we develop wastewater management services on the Cape that will serve the Cape well and protect the Cape’s environment 50 years from now?” Shelley asked.

That’s the billion dollar question.

For a marked-up copy of the article, click below.

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