Solutions sought to peninsula sewer issues

Published in the Galveston Daily News
December 18th 2005
by Kelly Hawes

The sewage undergoes some transformation, Schultz said, but not much.“Any time you have untreated sewage, you have some health concerns,” he said.

According to the health district, the bacteria in raw sewage can cause diarrhea and weight loss. More severe symptoms include vomiting and fever.

Schultz’s staff will soon be sending out letters asking affected property owners to install working septic systems. For some, that task will be more complicated than it will be for others.

“Some of the lots are not large enough for a standard septic system,” Schultz said.

The health district figures a standard system will cost about $5,000. For the more innovative systems needed on smaller lots, the cost might be twice that.

And the health district already recognizes that many of the property owners can’t afford that sort of expense.

“We have quite a few economically disadvantaged people in that community,” Schultz said.

According to the 2000 Census, roughly 660 of the 1,800 households on the peninsula were living on an income of less than $25,000 a year.

Patrick Doyle, whose county commissioner’s precinct takes in the peninsula, said the houses themselves were not always in the best condition.
“Some of them are old, old houses,” he said.

County officials have been looking for ways to provide financial assistance.

“We’ve been looking for grant money, but nothing has come through,” Schultz said.He said his staff would try to work with property owners, but he acknowledged that without a funding source, coming up with solutions wouldn’t be easy. “It’s definitely a difficult situation,” he said.

Doyle noted that state and county officials had been struggling with the problem for a long time.

“They’ve waited for 25 years,” he said. “They might have to wait a little longer.”

Schultz conceded the district had been aware of the problem for some time, but he said his staff had only recently nailed down the list of homes connected to the system.

“We know it’s not going to be an overnight solution,” he said, “but we think it’s more acceptable to make some progress rather than to take no action.”

The Bolivar water district recently applied for a grant through the state water development board to study the feasibility of a regional sewer system for the peninsula. At a meeting last week, officials with the health district and the school district agreed to join in that effort. Schultz said the first challenge was to win the grant.

“It’s a competitive process, so it’s not a given,” he said.

And even if the utility district wins the grant, Doyle said, the $220,000 study is only a preliminary step
“This would just allow us to get in there and find out what’s feasible,” he said. “Any actual projects would still be years away.”

Jennifer McKnight, the water utility’s general manager, said the district would find out in April or May whether it had won a grant. The study then would take about 18 months. Any projects that resulted would have to be finished within six years.

“That’s one of the requirements of the grant,” she said. “If it takes longer than that, we have to pay back the grant.” She said that with all of the recent development on the peninsula, the study was a matter of self-defense.

“We do know a lot of developers are putting in systems, and we want to have some sort of plan in place,” she said. She said developers sometimes built systems and then disappeared once all of the houses had been built. “As it stands, we are the only entity that could logically operate these systems,” she said. “We’ll be looking at whether one regional system might make more sense than 20 individual ones.”

McKnight said environmental concerns were also driving the application. “My gut feeling tells me a lot of septic systems on the peninsula are failing, but I could be pleasantly surprised,” she said. “We might find out that what we have now is the best system possible. That’s why we want to do the study.”