Opinion: Dennis voters can help address Cape's wastewater woes

Why do we not have wastewater treatment on the Cape — as sewage plants are so delicately called? It was more of a philosophical issue than a logistical or even monetary one.

Part of it was people who invoked their God-given right to empty their cesspools into the Swan River, a practice the Pilgrims had handed down. It was tough on the swans as houses multiplied, but that wasn’t the point. There were so few people and houses that it didn’t make any difference given the size of the ocean.

We were on the cusp of a housing boom, partly because you could deduct taxes on a second home for the first time, but as the 1980s economy began to surge, the market for vacation homes grew and real estate speculation took off. The building and the enforcement mechanism for improving Cape-wide waste control was very effective – you could not sell a house unless it had a Title V system.

The reason there was no real sewer systems with pipes proposed was that we "didn’t want to become the Hamptons." By having individual systems instead of a bona fide sewer system, it required acreage and limited the amount of building to what could safely and effectively leach into the ground.

That was 40 years ago.

Since then, the Land Bank and Community Preservation Act began to purchase large amounts of land for environmental preservation. Towns voted to purchase and protect large plots of land, to the point where now the Cape’s land mass is almost 40 percent under perpetual environmental restriction.

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During those decades, we prevented the build-out but still rely on the ultimately ineffective holes in the ground that soak into the lenses of water, the underground lakes that make up our drinking water. As people have moved here, there has been a tendency to have green lawns, created with pesticides and irrigation systems, washing the chemicals into the water sources.

Our reservoirs are invisible and under our feet – if you asked if there should be pesticide spraying or sewage leach fields next to the Quabbin Reservoir, the reaction would be horror. But our invisible water source is being jeopardized in exactly that way with "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" pollution.

We are better off east of the Bass River, as we are not on the deeply challenged Sagamore water lens with pollution from the airport, fire academy and heavy commercial use. But the Pilgrim lens, the Pamet lens, and the other underground water sources will become endangered unless we create a waste system with pipes and treatment.

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In Dennis, there are two town meeting articles, Numbers 21 and 22, that will fund the design and engineering work for a pipes-in-the-ground sewer system, and a design plant to process and treat the wastewater. The designs are necessary to have a management plan to eventually construct the treatment plant.

In the past, the town created an investment fund to save for the future need, and those investment and stabilization funds dedicated to wastewater have more than $7 million set aside for this purpose. Dennis would become eligible for hundreds of millions in new wastewater funding through the EPA sponsorship of the State Revolving Fund, not to mention infrastructure and construction money available from federal funds.

But to build the facility and construct the infrastructure, you have to have the plans drawn up first.

This has been percolating (pardon the pun) for a long time. Years ago, a plot was set aside near the Seaview Playland to construct the plant, but the cost of going it alone was huge. There was a "multi-town" plan with Yarmouth and Dennis, with the fanciful transportation of raw sewage across the Bass River (what could go wrong?) but the needs of the two towns are so different and the ratio of commercial to residential so divergent that the plan fell apart.

The current plan is for Dennis to act, and possibly become a host processing facility for Harwich and perhaps Brewster as well, helping with the costs to the town for an ultimately necessary facility. The town’s share of money to fund the designs has been set aside over time, the financial impact will be offset by the other funding available, and it is an ultimately necessary project.

Opinion: Dennis water quality is in decline. Town Meeting can reverse the trend.

Now is the right time for Dennis town meeting to act.

So be sure to attend next Tuesday night, and vote for the articles. And maybe repeal the bottled water ban while you’re at it.

Cynthia Stead is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times and can be contacted at cestead@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion: Dennis voters can help address Cape's wastewater woes