Wastewater

The holiday season is upon us and that often means a bustling house full of family, friends, and preparation of tasty recipes in the kitchen. All of these things should make for joyful times, but they can potentially have a stressful impact on your private water well and onsite wastewater systems.

The new year is a time where we all make goals and a plan of attack for the upcoming 12 months.  We often think of things we will do to improve our health, save money or be more organized in all or part of our daily lives. One way to take steps to be more organized and also protect your and others’ health as well as the environment is to get reacquainted with your water system--both your drinking well and your on-site wastewater system—and to establish a testing and maintenance schedule for the upcoming months. 

This year’s National SepticSmart Week is September 18-22, 2017. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a week in September each year to focus on improved awareness of proper operation and maintenance of septic systems across the United States. The wastewater of approximately 25 percent of the population of the United States is treated by on-site or individual wastewater systems. In Nebraska, this statistic holds consistent with 25 percent of our state’s population being served by onsite wastewater systems on farms, acreages, suburbs and even some small communities.

Lagoon size is determined by the number of bedrooms, as well as the annual evaporation and precipitation rates for the geographic region. The lagoon size is NOT based on the square footage of the house, or the number of people living in the house because occupancy can change.

Problems sometimes occur. Some of the problems that occur include: sluggish drainage, contaminated drinking water, wastewater surfacing in the yard, odors, and pipes freezing.

An important soil characteristic, the percolation rate, measures how long it takes water to drop one inch in a saturated hole dug in soil. Fast: 1 inch in 3 minutes (sandy soil). Slow: 1 inch in 48 minutes (clay soil). If it takes less than 5 minutes for the water to drop 1 inch in a saturated hole, the effluent will move too rapidly to be treated properly, such as in sandy soil.

The ability of soil to accept water or for water to travel through soil is called soil permeability. Percolation is the movement of water through soil. A soil percolation test is designed to measure the rate of water movement in saturated soil (mimicking conditions that soil treatment systems have) so that one can decide the appropriate type and size of treatment system.