KDKA online is where I first saw this terse AP feed reported:
MALIBU, Calif. (AP) Water regulators have taken a step toward banning septic tanks in the heart of Malibu, Calif., after a battle over bacterial pollution at popular beaches.
Residents and city leaders have long opposed switching from septic tanks to sewer pipes because the infrastructure could be used to bring massive development to the rustic community.
Members of the Los Angeles regional water board on Thursday directed staff to draft a plan that would yank the city's ability to manage commercial septic systems in its center.
The plan would also ban septic tanks in the area and propose a wastewater treatment plant. The water board is expected to consider those plans within a year.
I doubt there's much more to the story, but there are several additional hits for this Google. Bless the smart people in Malibu, not wanting the character and charm of their existing neighborhoods to be disturbed. West coast wisdom exists also in parts of Ramsey, the Malibu of the Midwest (in a sense, but only in a sense). And, no surprise, the Malibu minions are feeling the heavy boot of regional planners - another variety of crabgrass that seems a nationwide menace.
In Ramsey we have no polluted beaches - indeed, no beaches at all.
Moreover, we have that nice sandy soil that perks superbly, not to mention that multiple septic system drainfield restoration steps are possible wherever a problem might occur. Such repair and restoration can be done at reasonable cost, certainly for far less than the imposed assessment charges accompanying a hookup to municipal services, while in many Ramsey locales hookup is an unavailable option.
Add to that the fact that the major higher groundwater pollution is single-point sourced, the landfill, and its problematic flows swamp any individual home's septic system contribution to "groundwater quality impact" so that we should, in all decency, simply be left alone within our existing Ramsey neighborhoods that have homes on large sandy soil lots.
Within a half mile of where I live, in such a home-on-large-lot, John Peterson built his Alpine Woods [I believe that's his development's hokey name, they all sound alike, equally hokey] which is entirely out of character with existing homes in the neighborhood.
But it was permitted, as the vehicle that allowed his crossing Sunfish Blvd. with the big sewer pipe so that he could extend it to the Bauer Gun Club and his cornfield project at Highway 5 and Trott Brook, where it could impact that watershed and all of the intervening wetlands, which have suffered diminished water level after ditching and trenching and construction dewatering, things done to allow him to have his way with trunk sewer routing.
Graywater: The wetland impact question is interesting because several people at Ramsey's 2008 comp plan sessions have noted the wisdom of keeping graywater [aka greywater] in the community's wetlands instead of further impacting them via storm and sanitary sewer diversion piping the graywater into the river without any resuscitation benefit to our unique neighborhood wetlands.
Septic systems help sustain Ramsey's diminishing and impacted wetland ecology, Met Council routing and management does not. If we must have the latter, which we do as an existing reality, it should be restrained and supervised in ways that will lessen its negative aspects. Keeping a large part of the graywater for our wetlands will do exactly that. Sensible graywater management is simply a wise way to plan for a less impacted Ramsey future.
_____UPDATE______
Most of the online hits about Malibu septic system reliance only repeat the brief AP feed quoted above. However, here is one link readers might find more interesting, showing City of Malibu wastewater management thinking.
(photo of Malibu Point, from here, see here for the same locale, differing perspective -- with temperature outside below freezing, such photos are nice)
