Community Environmental Services, Inc.
Helpful Tips and Technical Information
While many property owners are fortunate enough to find engineers and/or architects to help effectively and successfully guide their projects, all property owners are encouraged to participate at least to some extent in "quality control" of the planning process. It is after all their investment. CES prepared a document that can be used as a general reference guide to property owners in the planning process. "Tips for Success" can be downloaded here.
CES encourages the use of wastewater service options that have been found to be truly sustainable and cost-effective on a long-term basis. During the past 30 or so years, aerated tank units adapted the activated sludge process for use in residential and small commercial applications. Activated sludge processes have been commonly used for many years for larger municipal scale treatment systems. CES is sometimes contacted by property owners inquiring either about problems with their existing system, or about options they might consider in cases where "conventional" or "standard" systems can't be used due to site conditions. Unfortunately, the public is often left to believe that there is only one alternative to a basic system using septic tank treatment and subsurface dispersal: "aerobics", or aerated tank units. That is definitely not the case, as there are a number of other well-proven and effectively used treatment methods for residential and larger scale decentralized wastewater systems. Examples include a variety of packed media filter systems, which were found in a recent WERF study to be on average significantly more energy efficient than activated sludge systems, and perform well for providing secondary and advanced treatment. Descriptions of some of those treatment methods can be downloaded here.
Further information about aerated tank units can be downloaded here.
