Onsite Wastewater Treatment Management Systems

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), one in four households in the United States rely on decentralized/onsite wastewater treatment systems. Unfortunately, no federal monitoring standards or performance criteria exist for decentralized systems. Local governments are supposed to regulate these systems from permitting through operation and replacement. However, agencies rarely have the resources to regulate beyond installation. To address this issue, the US EPA released five management models in 2003 that were adopted and adapted in a variety of fashions across the nation. However, these models have not been updated and lack technological recommendations. In an effort to merge technology and current management models, this paper (1) analyzes the US EPA recommended management models in order to understand where responsibilities lie for the decentralized wastewater management and (2) demonstrates which parties the recommended practices most heavily rely on and how remote monitoring (RM) can alleviate those responsibilities. Remote monitoring (RM) is not a new technology and has been widely applied to centralized wastewater treatment systems, but has seen little application in decentralized systems.