Sewer Avoidance in Old Lyme Connecticut

The Town of Old Lyme, Connecticut has an established Sewer Avoidance Program. It is a proven fact, established in Rhode Island and in Massachusetts, that with nothing more than technology already approved and in use in these and other nearby states, human septic waste can be, and is presently, treated in situ. All this without the need for municipal sewage treatment plants discharging sometimes less than potable products into natural waters to eventually digest or dilute these wastes elsewhere.

Wastewater is a mineral resource that should be recycled. Old Lyme has been doing just that for 300 years.

Arguments to the contrary are tied to urban situations or industries. Here in Old Lyme, we have the experience of sanitarians who answer to the Connecticut Health Code, rather than to arbitrary rules created and enforced by the Connecticut DEEP. Combined sewers, that carry both storm runoff and sanitary waste, also contribute to the problem of waste treatment in urban areas of high population density, but here in Old Lyme there is no industry and little urban crowding.

Virtually every attempt by Old Lyme to mitigate the calculated pollution here has been rebuffed by the DEP or the DEEP, and this calculated pollution has not been demonstrated by any scientific test data.

M F Roberts