Lazaro Aleman, ECB Publishing, Inc.
Jefferson County residents living in certain areas of the Wacissa River Basin were identified as a Priority Focus Area (PFA) and will be subject to new state rules relative to their septic tanks beginning next year.
This is the main takeaway from a recent presentation to the Jefferson County Commission by representatives of the Florida Departments of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and Health (FDOH).
It boils down to this: Residents living in the PFA - an area that encompasses a large portion of the county, from the Georgia state line to far south of U.S. 27, and from the Madison County line to near Lloyd - may have to install more costly septic systems beginning Jan. 4, 2019.
Luckily for Jefferson County, existing septic systems in the PFA won't have to be remediated. But individuals who apply for new construction permits on lots of less than an acre in the PFA after Jan. 4 will have three options: connect to an available sewer; install a non-nitrogen reducing nitrogen system, provided that a sewer connection will be available within five years; or install a more costly nitrogen-reducing system.
Given that the first two options aren't really viable in Jefferson County, the last option is the only one really available.
It all has to do with water quality and the Floridan Aquifer, and it stems from the 1999 enacted Watershed Restoration Act, which was amended in 2006 and again in 2016 as the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act.
As Tom Frick, director of the FDEP's Division of Environmental Assessment and Restoration, explained it to the commission on Thursday evening, Sept. 6, his agency was charged with assessing the condition of 30 of the state's Outstanding Florida Springs (OFS) and coming up with a plan for the restorations of each spring found deficient.
“Our springs are iconic to Florida,” Frick said. “It's one of our great natural resources. In South Florida they have the Everglades. In central and north Florida we have the springs systems.”
The springs' degradation wasn't anything new, Frick said. It started in some springs as early as the 70s and reached a tipping point in 80s due to nitrogen infusions, he said.
“I think that's one of the important things to realize is that this isn't an arbitrary number or abstract value,” Frick said of the graphs depicting the nitrate and total nitrogen trends in various of the springs. “When you go
out to these iconic springs, you see very big changes in these systems. What happens with nutrients is that they grow. You can see the impacts on the Wacissa Springs.”
Dispensing with acronyms and bureaucratic language, Frick spoke in plain English of the restoration goal and the requirements to meet it.
“There's a whole bureaucratic process at work here,” he said. “But really, what we're trying to do is restore the health of these systems to what we remember so that our children can grow up and also enjoy them.”
Frick said the restoration plans covered a third of the state and hence affected a third of the state's population. He called the 2016 Act extremely progressive.
“It didn't just identify the 30 springs but set pretty aggressive goals for the state to achieve,”
he said.
Among the requirements assigned to the FDEP for the springs' restoration, it was given two years to assess the water quality of the 30 springs and develop a restoration plan for each one that was found degraded; identify the PFA for each spring and test the soils to determine their imperviousness and hence the aquifer's vulnerability to nitrogen infusions; and identify the sources that were contributing the nitrogen.
In terms of the last requirement, Frick said the study determined that the two primary sources contributing nitrogen to the springs were fertilizers and wastewater. The fertilizers were coming from both urban and agricultural sources, and the wastewater was coming from septic tanks and treatment facilities, he said.
In terms of the prohibitions that came with the study's findings, Frick said that the most significant for the Wacissa River Basin was the one affecting septic tanks.
The new law, he said, mandated that new septic systems installed on lots smaller than an acre could not be the conventional ones installed nowadays.
“The current systems are designed to work on pathogens for human health, but they don't do a great job of reducing nutrients like nitrogen because they're not designed to treat for nitrogens,” Frick said.
The good news, he said, was that the FDEP was not requiring remediation in the Wacissa Basin, as it was in other basins where thousands of existing septic systems would have to be replaced. Going forward, however, new systems installed on less than an acre in the Wacissa Basin PFA would have to be the more expensive advanced systems, of which there were several options.
The other important point, Frick said, was that state monies were available via the FDEP and the Suwannee River Water Management District to help landowners with the installation of the enhanced septic systems.
Following Frick's presentation, Alex Mahon, the director of environmental health for Leon, Madison and Jefferson counties for the FDOH's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection, gave more detailed information on septic systems and the options available under the new law.
Mahon reiterated that the conventional septic system was very good at treating sewage but not nitrogen. He explained that when a toilet is flushed, the waste settles in the tank and the water goes out into the drainage field, where it percolates through the soil so that it's largely purified by the time it hits the groundwater.
Not so much with the nitrogen content, however.
“While you get some nitrogen reduction in a drain field, about 35 percent, it's not sufficient to deal with the issue we're dealing with now,” Mahon said.
He explained the definition of “new” per the Florida Administrative Code, in terms of when an application for a septic tank system would be considered new and hence require the installation of an enhanced septic system.
He said the definition applied where no septic tank existed; where the previous system was abandoned; where the previous FDEP-regulated treatment facility was withdrawn; where the system was to serve a house addition rather than modifying an existing system; where the system was to serve an additional structure on the property; where the system was to replace a system over which a structure had expanded; where the placement of a pool or other structure impacted on the existing system; where the domestic flow increased more than 20 percent at a non-residential establishment; or where there was any increase in the commercial sewage flow.
Mahon next listed the various enhanced treatment systems currently on the market, each more costly than the conventional septic system. These included a nitrogen-reducing aerobic treatment unit, a performance-based treatment system, and an in-ground nitrogen-reducing bio-filter.
“The fortunate part for Jefferson County is that you don't have do remediation for the existing septic tanks,” Mahon said. “Whereas Leon County has to do it for Wakulla Springs.”
He also said that the enhanced system could be twice or four times costlier than the conventional system, depending on the type of system selected, the area's soil type, the water table elevation and other factors.
For more information, call the environmental health section of the Jefferson County Health Department at (850) 342-0170.
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