A developer wants to build a waste water treatment plant on property near my son..Is is Safe to do this...?

The developer wants to put in the first privately owned and operated waste water development. It is a very rich community and he cannot get permission ot hook into the city and sewage system because it is overworked now..We are on an adjacent development and we are afraid the of the odors and environmental problems that might come of all this...Are there any articles or legal procedures that we may back up our claims that we can prevent this from becoming a reality...Thanks

I work for a private company that manages Water and Wastewater plants... if this does become a reality make sure they have a good operator, because if it is ran correctly than you will have no smell and very little noise... but to put in a plant they do have to go through a lot of red tape through your state and the epa. Hope this helps

An EPA study will take years. The best thing to do is to go out on the land he wants to build on and find a teeny-weeny little bug that lives there and then call the Sierra Club.

Seriously, he will have a lot of legal and administrative hoops to jump through before a shovel is stuck in the ground.

It sounds like the property there is in a pretty heavily property taxed area. You and your neighbors will have a lot of chances to be heard.

I hope you can certainly put a halt to this outrage! Imagine, treating raw sewage! What are these people thinking?

So, do you just not want a private poop plant there (trust me, it's NOT the first one - maybe the first in your area) or do you not want the development there?

There are really four choices here:

1. No development on the property
2. Low density development with septic tanks
3. Expand the current treatment plant to create more capacity
4. Put in a private plant.

If you are just anti-development, #1 is your choice; but if you don't want development on a parcel you had better buy it or have your local government ban the development and pay the current owner/developer of the property the economic damages. #2 has its own problems; septic drain fields take lots of room and tend to pollute nearby surface waters and aquifers. Expanding the current plant would cost YOU money in higher sewer rates. Seems to me that a private plant is the best solution for you and your son with the lowest cost both financially and environmentally. If we ignore the financial cost to you and your son, expanding the current plant is the best solution both environmentally and for the owners of the new houses.

A properly operated, modern treatment plant will have very low/no odor outside its fence line and will result in much less chance of pollution than septic tanks and drainfields.