Septic Issues: Collaborative Solutions - Community Cooperation for Conservation
The Board and staff of the DeKalb County SWCD believe strongly in the importance of planning. We meet annually discuss the resource concerns of the County. We review and update our business plan and plan of work as to how to best address these concerns in an the ever changing technology, political, and funding landscape
From this process, degraded surface water quality as a result of E. coli has been identified as one of DeKalb County’s critical natural resource concerns. Specifically, failed on-site septic systems, poorly maintained on-site septic systems, and lack of hook-up when municipal sewer becomes available are significant contributors to this conservation concern.
At the direction of the Board the DeKalb SWCD staff began to address this concern by communicating with other County Departments who also work with septic/ sewer issues. The result of this work was a formal event entitled “Addressing Septic Issues – Collaborative Solutions” held December 2, 2011. Facilitated by Janet Ayers of Purdue University the purpose of this meeting was to have a collaborative discussion of sewer/ septic related issues within the county and develop potential actions for addressing them.
With 20 representatives from municipalities and county government the group identified and prioritized the major issues, agreed to meet on a regular basis to continue the discussions, and formed a steering committee to lead the process. This was an important step for addressing this water quality issue in DeKalb County.
Since this original meeting the group has made significant progress on the identified action items and continues to meet regularly to work on how to best address this complex, expensive, and unpopular issue. The mission statement that has emerged for this work is: Fair, consistent, and economically feasible implementation in addressing waste water issues now and in the future.