Election Opinion: Sustainability and Human Waste

(Editor’s Note: BullWings:Orcas Issues welcomes opinions and commentary by candidates for the positions to be decided by voters in the November election. We will endeavor to give all candidates the opportunity to voice their opinions).

By Roger Adams

Sustainability is on almost everyone’s mind these days.

We face the stark certainty of actual environmental decline. Marine species, such as the killer whale and salmon have been in decline for some time. On land, the bees are disappearing along with many other forms of flora and fauna. We wring our hands in anguish but continue down the same path. We feel trapped.

Sustainability has an economic component as well. The collapse of the real estate market has forcefully encroached on our collective attention. The dollar has lost half its value in the last decade. Prices for many items that we depend on have doubled while the wages for working and retired people’s incomes languish or disappear. Our focus on sustainability shifts. For those of us not endowed with suitable sums of cash to see us through this rough patch, it is more like survival.

But the two are linked as surely as husband and wife. If they don’t live in harmony, the whole family suffers.

Take, for example, the way we deal with our human waste: I’m talking about the liquid type. In the past, we built outhouses and we drained our gray water on the ground or into the salt chuck. Next we installed septic tanks and drain fields so everything went back into the ground. Then it became necessary to have a municipally owned and operated sewer collection system with pipes and treatment facility. This meant that suspended solids were separated from the liquid and were shipped off the island to be put in the ground someplace else and the remaining liquid, after going through aerobic and chemical treatment, was dumped in the sound.

What do we get from this increasingly complex method of dealing with our human waste besides greater cost? Surely, the benefits outweigh any problem or unintended consequence. Yet, there are a number of factors that the sewer district can’t or is not equipped to evaluate.

When questioned about pharmaceuticals entering the marine environment, the district says 75 percent of the pharmaceuticals are eliminated through the treatment process but no actual data is available since no testing for pharmaceutical content takes place. Even if the 75 percent figure is correct, we still don’t know what danger is represented by the remaining 25 percent.

The more we divert our effluent to the sewer facility, the less there is returning to the ground to sustain local area flora. Increasing density compounds the problem. Storm water runoff increases. In order to deal with the intermittent flows, we build more infrastructure to shunt runoff to the sound. Trees and plants die-off over the long run from decreased moisture in the soil. Local observers report that outflow from the Crescent Beach wetland has decreased substantially over the last few years. The ability of existing wetlands to absorb harmful substances contained in the storm water are diminished. More pollution enters the environment to do harm. Costs of new systems to fix unexpected problems escalate and impact the least able to afford them disproportionally. We have gotten on the merry-go-round of unintended consequences.

We don’t have to accept this. Let’s do something that makes a difference.

Roger Adams
Eastsound, WA

Candidate for Eastsound Sewer & Water District, position #5