Built on the experiences of a suburban municipality in central Pennsylvania, this presentation will detail the successful local policy development, citizen communications, and program implementation processes that resulted in an onsite system management program. Roughly 1,200 onsite systems are covered in this program. Located in the land of the self-proclaimed, self-important, the elected officials successfully transferred more than 90% of the ongoing management program implementation costs to the landowners while achieving a 100% participation rate. In the first three years of the program, no court actions were needed to achieve participation.
Basic principals of governmental leadership and program ownership, effective public communications and involvement, and a strong public-private linkage were the crisscrossing paths that led to success. Keeping government officials off residents’ land leveraged support and amplified acceptance. Appealing to self interest, personal financial benefit and residents’ propensity toward frugality were key and intentionally unstated ingredients.
These concepts and their underlying principals can be used in any municipality where a potentially controversial public policy issue will be raised. When the intention is for there to be some sort of public intervention into what are held to be individual rights, the process described can overcome obstacles and garner support.
The goals of this program were repair/replace malfunctioning onsite systems, identify under performing systems for enhanced scrutiny, identify areas of concern where future sewer extensions may be needed, establish and continue a septic system focused communications program with landowners, and avoid costly state mandates.
This presentation will also detail program components which can benefit from a robust industry-government-public dialog. For success, it is essential to remove all aspects of the “I’m in it for my advantage” agenda. Weaknesses and missing links in current PA statute will be presented as they are likely missing elsewhere.
Here here! This is why so many managment programs are not effective...can't wait to hear the talk. An example of an inadequate management program would one that is put in place that have the homeowner pay for 4 or 5 years of service and maintenance up front on an advanced treatment unit and when it comes down to troubleshooting a system or trying to work with the homeowners they simply do not want to be bothered. In some cases systems are paid for by government and given away to the homeowners which is even worse...especially when those systems have performance criteria that require the homeowner to be educated.
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