On-site sewage disposal systems face maintenance requirement
By Shannon Sollinger
The Loudoun County Health Department will be setting mandatory maintenance requirements for alternative, or nonconventional, on-site sewage disposal systems. Since the state approved the newer, high-tech systems, about 1,200 have been installed in Loudoun.Loudoun's Board of Supervisors approved the mandatory maintenance and inspection regime unanimously (Lori Waters, R-Broad Run) absent) at its Sept. 2 business meeting.
At the same meeting, they voted to advertise an amendment to the county's ordinances that will ban the installation of all but conventional sewage disposal systems for five years. Chairman Scott York (I-At large) and Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) voted against the change.
Of the 1,200 non-conventional systems that have been installed, according to staff at the Environmental Health Department, 11 have failed. The Health Department supported the mandatory maintenance but questioned the need to ban all nonconventional systems. The ban, if adopted, will not affect about 2,000 systems that are already at least part way through the approval process, and it will have a sunset clause of five years.
A conventional system feeds waste from a house or business into a tank where the solids drop to the bottom. The fluid is dispersed over a drain field of trenches from which it seeps back into the ground.