We're negotiating and offering them choices. I think basically all very positive. Uh two questions that were raised by select board members were one was possible reuse of the land at the existing beds
once the outfall is fully functional and Amy's response was uh possible but long-term you know it's there's too many unknowns and the plan is to keep the existing beds for uh emergency use only
um the other was from Mr. Mscali relative to suppose we don't get the outfall then what? And that's the uhoh question because it's so vital to any expansion um response that Amy gave was
well we've got two potential sites for landbased but all the complexities are there and that's the Allen parcel and the Falmouth country club that was purchased for effluent disposal many years ago but never moved forward. Uh, great pond phase one work is ongoing at
the Augusta parcel for the pump station and low pressure lines will start being installed on the Marav Vista Peninsula on June 15th. So that's next week. Um, quick note, a lot of attention's been given to what's Eversource been doing
out there in the sound with their barges and workboats on their new cables. Why are they still working? Um, finally got an answer from them. One cable has been energized and is in full use. The second cable expected to be energized later
this month and I have not seen any work going on for a while. So this should be just about done. Um interesting problem developing on Martha's Vineyard, our near neighbor 6 milesi across the sound.
Lagoon Pond, which for those of you who aren't familiar with Lagoon Pond is uh a very uh tightly constrained narrow entry and exit on uh Beach Road between Tisberry Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs.
And in 2015, the state did a new drawbridge installation. And since that time, the pond quality has dropped dramatically. Eel grass is basically gone. Scallops are disappearing. There's a lot of algae blooms and they had their
first in anybody's memory cyano bacteria bloom this past year. Um dramatic change in the flushing flow and the development of sandbars blocking the inlet. So unintended consequence and not being
aware of the hydrodnamic changes that they made. the pond is in serious trouble. And coincidentally, um, just today, a new environmental monitor was published. And the, uh,
Tisberry Eenf that was submitted back in uh, published on May 8th and has another month of comment period till July 10, but it's 528 pages of a comprehensive wastewater management plan. and we'll be hearing about some of Felit's plans for
our uh distressed watersheds later tonight. But they are um part of their plan is to address the issues of Lagoon Pond uh with things like enhanced IAS u some
cluster systems, a PRB at Lagoon Pond of all things. So they're aware of the problem and that's in their comprehensive plan. um they have a very limited existing plan and uh if anybody wants to read 528 page comprehensive
wastewater management plan have at it but those are some of the highlights. Uh lastly in today's environmental monitor a decision was issued by the secretary of environmental affairs and what I guess a few other things in her title
but anyway her decision on the truro comprehensive wastewater management plan. they had submitted a um on April 8th a uh EENF
um and just on June 1st last week the secretary ruled that all they would require is a single EIR no draft required. They're considering it a rollover from a much earlier plan. So, um, again, they're looking at IAS,
primarily cluster systems and fertilizer and storm water management to alleviate the problems down in Truro. So, there's a couple of near neighbors that are having very active reviews of their much simpler plans than what Falmouth is
working on, but uh, we'll hear more about ours tonight. And that's it. >> Okay. Thank you, Ed. Uh, next up under reports of members is uh an update on the creation of a fairness committee. Uh, Steve, what do we know?
>> Thank you. Um, well, as you probably know, last November, the board of health requested the select board appoint a committee to look into fairness um for people who are will be required to install IAS or UDs and those required
to connect to sewers. And in December, this committee sent a letter of endorsement to that. And finally, on June 1st, the select board acted unanimously to create such a task force. And you can read about it in the uh last
enterprise if you want. And um the um they're calling it a task force. It will last a year. Have six members and um including a member appointed by this committee and another member appointed
by the board of health and uh anyone who wants to can uh apply. Uh there will be a notice seeking applicants in the enterprise on June 12th and they should be submitted by
June 26th. Okay. Um the question is do we want to take up because I have it on the agenda. We want to take up figure out who from the water quality should be the representative or I will defer to the rest of this board since a couple of us
are stepping down if you want to wait till the new board members are on before you you make that decision. Um I'm just going to pull >> that will be too late. They want to know before the new board takes place because the deadline is the 26th and the
committee change over is at the end of the month. >> Good point. Okay, >> Steve, >> does anybody want to serve on the committee? >> Steve, can I ask what we think the most important talents
a person from this committee would bring to that group? Is there any thought about particular expertise or arm twisting skills or whatever else might be required? >> Do you have an opinion? >> No. No. I'm just was I was just trying
to have some sort of structure where we could talk about who might be the best fit. >> Uhhuh. >> If they were willing. I've not been close enough to this to have a do you have does anybody have an opinion about what skill sets we
think would be be good? I think they have to be reasonably creative and analytical and able to work with the other people on the committee to reach a functional compromise. I I think knowledge of,
you know, the issues and the history and what future possibilities there are as far as things like the IIA mandates and further sewing and how much are betterments going to be going forward. The unresolved question, we're hoping
for a good thing about the uh state tax credit making it a refundable rather than non-refundable. Uh I know John's done a lot of work on that. Uh and as as Steve Leighton said, you know, the the ability to compromise and and also understand too the financial impacts of
anything going forward and you know, an understanding of where the board of health is on IA mandates going forward. There's so many issues associated with it that uh it's kind of scary. >> I'm going to poll the committee. Who are you interested, Ken?
>> No. Ed, >> I I don't um >> I don't think I'm diplomatic enough to to deal with some of the person. >> Steve, are you interested? >> I'm definitely interested. I've been working on this since the beginning. >> Tom,
>> no, I'm not, but I think we have a great candidate. >> We'll get down to the end. John, are you interested? >> Um, yeah. >> Okay. So, it it's it's a choice between uh Steve and John. Does does anybody want to put put a nomination in for
either one of them? >> I'll nominate Steve. >> Okay. Does anybody want to nominate John? You can nominate yourself. >> I would be happy to nominate John. >> Okay. >> You'd be great. >> No offense. No, not that Steve wouldn't also be great. >> Can't have two, can we?
>> John, I'm going to recuse myself since I'm not going to be on this board going forward. I also all those in favor of >> Can I make a slight campaign comment? Um, John would be fantastic at this and I will rely on the graph that he made,
but I would not want to distract besides my selfish motive of the fun of being on it. uh would not want to distract John from the other fairness thing that he's working very hard on which is the tax credit one which is related to this but
independent of it. >> Okay. John, you want to make a statement on your behalf as to why you think you'd be a good member? >> I mean I know Steve is near and dear to this also so I'm not going to say anything against what he wants. My
feeling is either one of us would do a great job and if one of us doesn't get the position, they can always apply to the open slot >> that's gonna exist because there'll be three more openings. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. All right. All those in favor of
John being our representative signify by saying I. >> I. Since I nominated him, I better be in favor of him. >> Are you going to vote for yourself, John? >> I'll abstain. All those in favor of Steve being on the fairness committee signify by saying I.
>> I'll say I. >> I. >> But let me suggest that it wouldn't hurt for us to have an alternate an official alternate position. >> Yeah, I >> that's a good idea. I I I'm I'm fine to entertain that, but I think we need to
go back through the town manager's office as to who they expect on the committee beyond a representative from board of health, >> right? This board whether or not >> alternates can or cannot be be be particip that's that's my thought on that topic. >> There will be a select board member. So
that's three of the positions. >> The select board is a leaison. That was if you went to the last select board meeting. what the article read that it was that's incorrect. They're going to have a liaison who's going to be the voice to connect this committee back to the select board, but they won't be one
of the five committee members. What they said at the select board meeting was they're going to look for people with backgrounds in social justice, economics, um you know, ethics, not a technical background. They're not looking for an IIA specialist of someone of that sort.
I mean, Steve and George were both at the meeting also. So, they're looking for somebody with a different set of skills. It's not going to be not going to be a select board member. >> John is right. >> My understanding from reading it was it was going to be a select board. >> No, they they changed that. I think they
did. >> Okay. And they also mentioned that uh we should definitely consider your diversion as certain people in the audience will be happy to hear. >> Yes. So, at this point here, Steve will will
be our designate and John, you're willing to be an alternate if they allow alternates. >> Well, I mean, >> I don't know what that means. >> Yeah, I don't either. That was just an idea I had. But >> well, at the very least, if I drop that, you're the first. >> Yeah. Okay.
>> If I miss him, that's fine. All right. Can we give you three days to see if you can >> before before we officially say that he's our designate. Are there any comments from the audience? >> George, just >> you have to come up to you have you have to come up to them.
>> George, you have to come up to the microphone because we we're on TV and all they're going to know on the TV is that somebody in the corner is saying something. >> Georgeopoulos, precinct 3. They haven't published or uh sent out the final
charge document. So, we really don't know what it is. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, you're our designate. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Um, the next item on the agenda is a presentation on the advancing ready act
and the 2023 title 5 regulatory goals, a debox nitrogen research and performance-based septic policy by Hilda Mingay and Earl Barnhard from the Green Center incorporated. We can see it here. That's nice.
With the arrows or the mouse, >> there's your flash drive so you don't forget. >> Hilda Mang Green Center. Thank you very much for giving us the time to talk about our latest research study.
So we I'm going to explain a little bit about the title. The mass ready act does many things but why we are interested in it is that we have found out in the last couple years we have been working on affordable housing and how it connects to wastewater and wastewater is one of
the biggest roadblocks in getting affordable housing to happen fast enough. And we have experienced that of course with the apartments but we also experienced that with people that want to put ADUs in of the survey done in uh lower Cape about 25 people wanted to put
an a an ADU in and only 20 and only two proceeded because the 20 other three people it was too expensive too cumbersome too slow to get anything done regarding the wastewater. So we'd like to make a change in that.
So the title five as we all know here but the public might not. There have been two options that the town had. One was to have um conventional um septic systems and innovative alternatives installed to every single house or we
could make a watershed town plan. And the town uh plan to have a plan or they're working on a plan right now. the waterershed plan uh to meet the total maximum daily load and that is the amount of nitrogen that is ultimately
the maximum that can be put into a watershed um system especially the esttoaries which is the only thing they're concerned about. So and planning FHL is now also planning to have besides sewers also a lot of IAS. Now we have
concerns about the IAS. The number of pounds that an IIA actually puts in the ground is not known. Um it's all an estimate and it's very uncertain. The performance is judged solely by concentration and we will prove that
that is not a good way to um pursue. concentration is not directly related to the load of nitrogen and based on concentration it's not known what the load of an eye actually is. So we're doing planning with numbers that we actually don't know.
Source separation is the way to actually remove the nutrients that come from human waste that is the major cause of the pollution to keep it out of the water. And uh the green center debug study was done to determine the load of
homes with various source separation systems. Compare those sources separation systems with the best available nitrogen reducing IIA septic systems and ultimately collect data to create the most efficient most environmentally
sound management plan. The nitrogen load in the effort can be determined by multiplying the water volume by the concentration in milligrams uh nitrogen per liter. And that's what we did in our program in our
research. Now there's a lot of confusion. People have a hard time understanding the difference between concentration and load. And this picture might help a little bit in in explaining that. Even last meeting, I heard one of the members having a hard time understanding the difference. Um so if
you have a high concentration that doesn't mean anything about the load. So if you have a cup of nitrogen going into a quart of water the the concentration is very high. The same cup of water a cup of nitrogen in a big bucket of five gallons the concentration is very low
but the amount the actual load is exactly the same. So we have we have in our study we tried to have various people actually whoever signed up and we had luckily people with different kinds of source separation
fixtures maybe all can explain the different ones that we encountered. Uh yes, there's a category of source separation fixtures and what it means is it's a fixture that keeps the human waste out of the water, does not put it down the flush toilet. And there are
four different versions of this. Uh one is a composting toilet. Uh sample being a Phoenix, this big blue box on the right. All the human waste goes into this composting toilet. Feces and urine all goes in there. It's diverted from the waste water. It does not go into the
ground. It goes into the compost. All the nutrients from all the people who use this composter, it is diverted and is collected in the compost and the compost is removed later by a service and taken away out of the watershed. There's a urine diverting composting
toilet. This is a composting toilet where the urine is diverted in the bathroom in the with the fixture, collected in a tank and exported out of the waterhed as liquid urine. the solids from the the feces from the people who use this toilet uh goes into the
composting toilet and ends up in compost and it's eventually removed by a service out of the waterhed. So that diverts from the water waste water and groundwater all of the human waste nutrients. There are a number of
different urine diverting fixtures. Uh some of them are flush toilets that divert urine also. Some of them are fixtures where the urine is diverted as as liquid and stored in a tank and taken away by a service later. And these uh
pictures show a um flush toilet that's urine diverting. Um, it shows a a Q.B. which is a a portable unisex urinal and it shows a peep pod which is a men's urinal uh in a wall of
a bathroom where the urine is diverted out of out of tube into a tank and stored and removed later. There's a fourth category that's considered um source separating and that's a incinerating toilet. an incinerating toilet. All the human waste goes into
that toilet and it's burned up and it goes up as gases and ashes into the at the end of the process. What this does, it diverts all of those nutrients from the groundwater. None of it goes into the groundwater. So, these are all examples of source separating
uh systems that a house can have that keeps all the nutrients out of the ground. So all these systems are urine diverting but not all these systems are urine collecting. So there's two different um ways to look at urine diversion.
So we did a study a green center over the last half year where we investigated the amount of nitrogen that was leaving homes going into the groundwater from homes that use different combinations of
uh source separating fixtures and toilets. >> Uh the first one on the top left is a is a house that has a uh urine diverting composting toilet. The urine is diverted into a tank and and removed. This house
happens to use cubes which is the unisex portable urinal and it also has a peepod in the wall and all the urine from these fixtures are collected as liquid urine and taken out and removed from the wershed. The solids from this house goes
into the composter. Nothing goes into the septic tank except gray water. washwater sinks, kitchen sinks, uh mostly non-nitrogen uh intense waste water. The second one on the middle is a composting toilet
which is a Phoenix. This is a currently approved composting toilet for any house uh to use uh by right as the only toilet in the house. All of the human waste goes into this composting toilet, this Phoenix, and it ends up inside the compost and removed later in the
compost. Only the gray water goes into the septic tank. Now, notice in the in the picture after the septic tank, there's this little box called a a debox. Most all homes that have a septic tank, after the water comes out of the septic tank, it's called effluent. It goes
through this little debox. And what this does is it diverts the water into different directions. Some homes have multiple uh leech fields. You might send the waste water from the septic tank into one leech field for five years and then switch to another one. But this
debox is where you can take a sample of the water coming out of the septic tank and determine how much nitrogen is in there. That water is what goes into the ground. And in our study, we did uh sampling of that debox to find out how
much nitrogen was leaving the septic tank and going into the ground. Uh the the third one on the upper right is a house that has a Phoenix composting toilet, but it also has a urine diverting flush toilet and um or no, a normal flush toilet. So in that house
they have if a person uses a flush toilet, it goes into the septic tank. If they use the composting toilet, it goes into the composter. It's a voluntary decision they make. Um, one of our homes had that. Uh, the fourth one is a um a
flush toilet that has a a Q.B. Also, people in this home can use a flush toilet if they choose. The solids always goes into the flush toilet, but they can choose to have all the urine into the portable uh QB urinal or yes, QB urinal. So, they can divert nitrogen away from
the septic tank to the degree that they use the Q.B. And typically if you use a cubby you put it in manually into a storage container. The last one is a house where they had a flush toilet that goes into an existing
IIA. They have a Fuji clean Japanese IIA and the flushing from the toilet in the house goes into that and it removes the nitrogen as the normal IIA does. But they also use cubes to divert the urine voluntarily uh to um basically recycle
the nutrients. Uh that's the advantage of doing that. So those are the systems we used in our in our study. >> I think the next one you might want to do too. >> Okay. And the methods we used were we measured the water that is used in these
homes. There are two ways you can measure the water. You can read the water meter every month which is records how much you buy from the town you and how many gallons the house buys. Um if you have no outdoor water use all that
water goes through the house through the gray water through the toilets into the septic tank. That's the amount of effluent leaving the septic tank of that house. If you use outdoor water that water does not go into the septic tank. So you have to deduct that amount from the amount of the water purchased from
the town meter to find out how much water went through the house and into the septic tank and became effluent into the ground. Now the other method we used was to measure the water that's going through the de the debox from the septic tank through the debox to the leech
field. This is the most accurate way to determine how much uh water is used in the house uh for the calculation of the nitrogen leaving the house. And in this case, we put a pump in the debox and as the debox filled up 6 or 8 in, the pump
would come on would pump it out and send it to the to the leech field. But we recorded the amount of power required to do that pumping. And you can use the amount of power to determine the number of gallons that passed through the debox. And that has worked since October. We
have measured it many, many times manually. See if it was still accurate. It's very accurate. >> Did you get >> Nobody used outdoor water because it was the winter months. No, we have nobody used outdoor water because it was the winter months. No, we have people put on
the the meters. I mean I don't think >> I guess the question is the people that were not using outdoor water >> were they measuring the amount of water using this electric meter? >> No, they don't have to have to do that. They just have the water meter and they they sent us a picture of the water
meter readings and we know how much water they used in a month. >> If they use no outside water, all the water they buy from the town goes through their >> Yeah. Steve's question was that that there's no sight water use and the impression was that the people you had these meters at multiple
locations there should have been a correlation but they weren't being used at those locations so there's no >> nothing and for this study all the results you see nobody was using out the water in the next two months people will be using outdoor water >> don't worry about it >> and then we have to deduct each meter
>> go back in >> one more >> uh the other the The methodology was how we measured and collected the samples. Uh this top left picture is a debox. It's a cement box in the ground couple feet deep. Water comes in from the septic tank in one pipe. It overflows
and goes into the leech field in another pipe. And we reach down into this D box with a jar, take out a sample, put it in a pre um prepared sample bottle from the Barnstable County Water Lab and we took
three samples for each uh debox and we provided them to the uh water lab and they tested analyzed them for the concentration of nitrogen in the water, phosphorus in the water and total nitrogen in the water. to the f and
between houses that that um little jar that we take the samples on gets cleaned so there's no contamination between the homes. Mhm. So we got some results and I just u the best available septic IA uh is 10
milligrams or less and the best study is Shoua pond study they measured it daily for many for a whole year did a report and they're still measuring I haven't seen the followup but we have compared our study with theirs so that we know how we are doing compared to the very
best IA system because since that's the only report that we know of that exist of uh good data. And if you look at the the bar chart on the left side, the shoa pond is before they installed the nitro. So the
water use is quite high. The nitrogen concentration is very high and the load is about 38 pounds per house and that's an average of 13 homes. After the IIA when they measured everything, the concentration went way
down. The water use was the same, very consistent, and the load ended up to be five pounds. So they really reduced their load by 33 pounds, and that was over 20 over a whole year depending on when people started. So the whole whole
project took a little longer than a year, but the measurements was for a year. So we did our measurements and we came up found out that just by chance because you know I don't pick people by how much water they use. um the water use is very low. That makes the
concentration in proportion high. But we don't care about the concentration. We only care about the ultimate load. And the load is 1.7 pounds of our system. So that's a combination of these different systems that we described. Some people have a flush toilet. Some people only
have uh QBs. But the basically on average our houses have 1.7 pounds of load per year. >> Yeah. What's interesting here is that the middle chart, middle of the chart, the IA, which is the best available
uh IIA that that is measured, which is a nitro puts out 5 pounds of nitrogen in the ground every year. It does not remove at all and so there was always a load from these IAS going into the ground. If you have source separation
and you remove all the human waste from the groundwater, you don't have you have less nitrogen going into the ground. So this is an overview of what you just saw in the bar graph that the nitro removes 33 pounds on average per year
and that we showed you are the most cost-effective environmentally sound wastewater management method. They lower cost, lower energy, lower water use, fewer greenhouse gases, recover all the nutrients, faster implementation, more
reliable and more climate resilient. The more reliable is extremely important because as we have heard from George Hfelder, IAS are not reliable and all of the systems work differently during the season and for other reasons that they have no clue about and urine diversion
is extremely reliable. It's just going into pipe and into a container. There's no biological system involved. Now we're getting to the policies. As we said in the in the very beginning, we are interested in more than just uh the
collecting the data. How are we going to use these data? So the first policy that we would like to see is the water management financial fairness and incentives, a fair payment structure. We just talked about that there's going to be a task force to
address this. Well, we have some ideas of what we think would be nice because I think everybody contributes to the pollution and I don't believe that it's fair to have somebody pay for IIA. Some people pay for sewers and some people no pay not pay for anything. That's hardly
fair since we all contribute. So, we came up with an idea that since the load is important just like electricity or water we pay for the load. The town pays a homeowner every year for the amount of
pounds that have been removed from that house through urine or whatever way we we had in the system and they should get paid for the nitrogen to remove because then it doesn't cost the town anything else for sewers or ice. But at the other
hand, the homeowner pays the town annually for each pound of nitrogen going into the waist stream. So if people want to eat a lot of meat, have a lot of nitrogen in their that's okay. They pay proportionally for more pounds and that makes it more fair. If you have
a lot of people, you pay more than if you have only one person and that is the most fair way that we could think of having a structure that everybody um participates in. And the people should pay more for the nitrogen that goes in
the ground and pollutes the water than they get back. So then the town accumulates money that can then be used for installing alternative systems like the source separation or urine diversion. It cost a sewer
three to $400 to remove one pound of nitrogen and that is continuously. and a person makes between eight and 14 pounds per year. So if any pound that we can divert
from the system to a sewer or to any other system would save the town a ton of money and with the budget crunch we have right now. I think it's important to start thinking about this. The second policy we should have a way to opt out of septic systems. You want
to do that the next couple? >> Um sure. the IIA septic systems. Um, in 2012 2014, Felmouth had an ecotoilet demonstration program and it it was to
test composting toilets and it tested half a dozen composted toilets, measured the nitrogen that came out of the houses with them and they discovered that the best ones diverted 90% of the nitrogen out of the groundwater into the compost. And one of the results, one of the
conclusions that Holfelder put into that report was that in watersheds where an IIA septic system is recommended solution for TMDL compliance, property owners will also be able to select eco toilets or source separation systems
that achieve the same level of nitrogen removal as is required for IIA septic systems. We want that written into the plans. We want that in the watershed plan. We want people to have the option to opt out of putting an IIA in if they can show they can do equal or better
with a source separation system. >> Uh same with the sewer. Um, if a person can show that they have removed as much nitrogen as the best IAS, we think they should be able to opt out of having to hook up to a sewer because you have eliminated the load that's going into
the ground, which is what the sewer is being built to deal with. >> And it might not be all, but it's so much cheaper that it's well worth it to do it that way. And it's also environmentally so much better. Think about again that it cost three to
four $400 per pound to remove. So if that's not going in, that's a big big savings for the town. We would also like to see that there is for each property a nitrogen discharge maximum load allowed and people should
always have to pay for any amount of load and then they get paid for any load that they have removed from the system. But we would like that to be in there instead of having um every IIA get the same value of how much pounds it's
supposed to take out which nobody really knows. We would like to say that if you can show you have five pounds or less going in then you have complied and Martine is doing something like that right now. They're doing it by load. They do it by the acre but they only
have so many houses per acre. So that's basically the same idea that the nitrogen load is there's a limit of how much you can put in in order to keep the estuaries or the water waste clean. >> So so the the rationale here is if you are putting in more than the limit, you
have to come up with some solution to either get down to the limit or pay for the um uh load you're giving the town to deal with in some other way. >> Right? And ultimately if people that choose not to do anything then it means we have more load and then we have to
put more sewers or something else in to make up for it. But the incentive really is to get paid for the nitrogen we moved here. >> Um this is an interesting thing. The Conservation Law Foundation in um 2013
sued the the Cape Cod Commission for not having a 208 plan. And they forced the Cape Cod Commission to spend two or three years with a 208 plan to deal with all the wastewater issues on the Cape. And they came up with uh doing it by wersheds, making towns responsible,
making towns share watersheds, all the stuff that now we are now in the middle of. the Conservation Law Foundation forced by lawsuits in 2013. And at that time, the head of the Conservation Law Foundation said that if if conversion to
composting toilets could be widely implemented, the nitrogen problem could be largely solved on Cape Cod. He also said that if a home has a composting toilet, it is highly likely that there will be no longer a measurable discharge of nitrogen, which is what we found. The
amount of discharge from these homes that have compost and toilets is like a pound over the whole year for the whole family. >> Yeah. An interesting part that I found by measuring it months to months to month how consistent each house was. That was the most most uh revealing that
it wasn't like spiking up and down up and down. That would happen only with concentration but never with load. People have pretty much the same habits at the house and the load was very this very similar and actually the water use was very similar. That was a really surprise too.
So ultimately this is what we came up with after four months of the averages of the houses. And you can see how the first bar from left to right from M to to J. How all those houses are well below the load that we think should be the maximum allowed load. This is five
pounds because that is the best IA system that have ever been measured which is nitro. And all the other houses, the houses on the right side, they hardly ever did anything. They had just flush toilets and they had a a QB that they used once in a while. And you can see how much
higher their their load is. But also, interesting enough, except for one, their water use is much lower than the average in Shoua pond. So that was kind of interesting. That makes their their nitrogen concentration look pretty high, but actually if you would count the
water, if you would make the hot water as high as the other ones, the nitrogen concentration would come down. >> Uh there's one other interesting thing on here. The first column is what Shubapon found was the real true amount of pounds of nitrogen coming out of the average house and it was 38 pounds on
average. the MEP model which is being used for all the calculations for all the watersheds uh is is 20 years old and at that time and in their in their calculations and in the models that we're using for all of this calculations
they they estimated the amount of load from a house is much much lower. So the real amount of load from a house is much higher than MEP estimates and is used in all the calculations for the uh wershed plans. And if we hold on to that low number which is not a real number you
can even ask mastc and George I mean those numbers have been wrong and known to be wrong for a long time but it means we have to put in many more IAS to make the number many more more sewers than actually needed because the load actually is much higher and it's it's
really frustrating it's frustrating to Hoyfeld it's frustrating to me it's frustrating for everybody who know town has to pay for huge huge amount of sewers because the numbers are so low. So we have to do a lot more to get to that that uh reduction.
>> The next one. >> Oh yeah. >> So I just quickly made an alternative plan. Um because we can according to mass DP you have to show where the numbers come from but you do not have to do sewers.
We were part of the 208 planning for two years at the Cape Cot Commission and it was very clear start with the least expensive, most environmentally sound, quickest system first and then you work your way up if that doesn't work till
you finally do sewers. Right now all I hear is sewers and a little bit of the other stuff. But not seriously. So I just thought, okay, what if we only did another few acres, eight acres of shellfish? Well, we don't need any sewers for the next phase.
>> This is this is great pond watershed, >> right? We only did great work. So, we save $100 million. I think it's worthwhile to try that because it is an alternative plan with something that you can check every year and every five
years to have the report how is the nitrogen level coming down, how is the water quality, what can what have do we have to do to make it better, which is actually not happening in Little Pond because 10 years later it wasn't good enough and we didn't do anything. But regardless of that, um, it was
interesting that it only took that many extra acres and this plant is 250 acres, I believe. So it's not even close to 10%. That that's all it would take to get to the numbers that are needed for a wershed plan. But I also believe that
it's really good to reuse the nutrients that are now being wasted and polluting the water. So I said, well, what if we just did a little bit less um of the oysters and I put in 40 um eco toilets
that we have measured and use that number and I was very conservative because we actually remove something like 35 pounds and I know there's some anteration but I just took 15 pounds. I just put made it very conservative.
Well, that means that right here housing that apply these source separation systems to get uh more affordable houses, more ADUs quicker because as we all know, we Haley has said we want 5 to
8,000 homes ADUs in the next couple years and it's impossible with the wastewater. There's so many blockages and such an expense that we have asked her right now. We have contacted her. We want the Cape, the South Coast, and the
islands become an innovation corridor so that she can say yes, you can put these systems in without all the the regulatory blockages that make it not happen. And that could just be an a kind of a sample research project by itself
because you can apply these ADUs with uh eco toilets really quickly and then you learn a lot from them. You measure them and that way we have two h two things that say that we learn from it with the research is happening and we get affordable housing much quicker. So
that's basically why we did this project and I really hope that the town is going to be very serious about >> if you can capture that it's going to have a huge impact. >> My concern if you can capture that it's going to have a huge impact. >> My concern lies in the previous bar
graph of the different homes that you showed the homes that are mixeduse homes where they have flush toilets and >> something else. Especially the the ones on the the far right there. Those perform very poorly relative to an IIA
alone. So do you think it makes sense to >> they hardly do anything? It's basically a flush toilet. >> Well, but you say that there's an alternative there. >> Yes, they have a they have a QB that they use, >> but that's that's how humans may be. They may have some system, one toilet
that is urine diverting, but if they have another toilet that's not, then just putting a little bit of urine in there makes makes a huge difference. So, what I'm getting at here is it makes sense for homes that are mixed use, have one toilet or two toilets that are UD
and and some toilets that are flush. We probably need to monitor those to make sure that they are actually >> removing the amount of nitrogen that we think the capabilities there and not being worse performers than our better IAS. So I think that should be part of
any you know program that we start going forward if I and UD are both equally acceptable that the testing that occurs for IAS or that's proposed for IAS should also apply to these urine diverting systems to make sure that
we're meeting these um goals that you're setting here. >> Actually I would say it's the opposite. Um we have measured everything for these systems but IAS are not measuring water and they're not measuring load. So I think every IA should be measured with water and load to know how they perform
and not concentration. The 10% the 10 milligrams per liter is not a good tool. So that all the IA should be measured for load. Then that's the only way we can have a plan that is actually with real numbers, measured numbers and not with some kind of um estimate. Right now
it's all one sizefits-all. And we have actually a person in here and she never did anything. She has only flushed toilets and she decided to use a QB and we have a before and after and she is
number F. You can see how low it is. This is an older person who started using a Q.B. It's a woman and before and after she reduced her nitrogen content by 85%. I don't have that here, but
that's in the report that I gave you. And that is really significant because that's just all flush toilets and only one QB. There's another person in here, number K, very low. High concentration because his water use is so extremely I
think it's F actually it's F concentration looks high but the load is extremely extremely little and the that's because he hardly uses any water. So you again you cannot do concentration that should never be used as a way to calculate a watershed plan but his load
is extremely low and he only uses a QB and all flush toilets. So there's a variation in here that shows that it is possible to have flush toilets and a simple urine diversion fixture and get a lot of urine out and a lot of nitrogen
out. >> You done? Yeah. Hey, Tom. >> Yeah. Um, I see a a couple of problems. One, you're preaching to the choir here because we've been trying for years to get the state to switch to loadbased
regulations and we hear crickets. We've worked hard to try to get them because >> I'm waking up crickets right now. Working on that. >> Yeah, that's where that's where the rubber meets the road. So we've got a a regulatory problem sort of a top- down
problem and then to sort of coin a phrase we have a bottomup problem because we have the issue of public acceptance of these systems where you know in a democracy so I see an amazing
sales problem or marketing problem I guess I should call it instead of sales where we've got to get an enormous number of people on board to get this to work. >> Not really. It could be just 40 and make a plan, right? >> Yeah. But the problem is they pay the
bills, they pay the taxes, and they decide what's going to happen. >> What is it? >> At the municipal level and at the state level. So I I mean we sort of tried this what 10 or 12 years ago. >> It's totally different.
>> It >> it's totally different system. Totally. I was a part of both programs. So I think >> right but I'm just saying in terms of public acceptance I think you have a problem there. I'd call it the bottom up problem there in addition to this top down problem from the regulatory standpoint. Well, people have the option
and if they have to pay for their nitrogen, they might think twice, >> right? >> And if they get money for their nitrogen, they might think >> I I agree completely with that. >> And um they have to do something, right? And if they have the option of doing this and measure it for five years and
see how they're doing instead of putting an IIA in that cost a ton of money and ruins their landscape, they might think twice. If they have the option later, oh wow, I didn't like this. I do an IIA. If they want to spend the money, that's fine. But we want to measure it and I want to measure it the way we did it. We
did it every month. But I think it should be done at least two or three times a year for two years and then dwindle down if it's very consistent. But it should be monitored. But I think IA should be the same. It should be monitored by load and not by concentration.
>> My sentiments exactly. >> Yeah. John Steve I think it's a wonderful presentation. I think that technically you're absolutely right and I wish that every member of the general public was
as dedicated as you two are. Falmouth would be an amazing place and John and Tomok already said most of my objections. Um again there's there's technically nothing wrong with it but well one
possible technical thing need an awful lot of monitoring and >> not any more than I less actually >> there's no system it's no no mechanical system >> and it has to take into account compliance
you have to have enough monitoring that you can handle the cheaters >> there's no cheating cannot cheat >> and there's no cheating in this group this is >> you cannot cheat because you have to pee in something. >> Well, for instance, you have to have all um you're in diverting fixtures. You
can't get a hybrid >> unless you monitor it thoroughly to see how much they're using one fixture by the total. I know >> the total is the bottom line. >> Yeah. Whatever it comes in the tank, that's what you get kind of >> but you have to monitor that every month forever.
>> No, you don't. Just when the tank is filled up, that's what we did with our first program. You measure how much in the volume is and you measure how much the concentrations and you know exactly how many pounds you have to do it once a year and the cost of of them of the uh testing which we did here and the people
paid for themselves is $93. So if that happens for people that in the beginning three times a year four times it's still more affordable than an engineer coming for an IIA. There's no mechanical parts in it. There is no biology. It's stable as could be. Nothing needs to be monitored. Nothing
can go wrong. You >> I I have to sit I I think that this committee should take it more seriously than we have in the past, but we're not going to just say yes, put Hilder in charge and do whatever they say. We have
to anal analyze it in a hard-nosed way and think about compliance and public acceptance. >> I invite you to come to our house and it might become a little bit more clear how the system works. There's no question that dedicated people can do it. No, >> I mean, you're taking all your nitrogen,
putting in a truck, and taking it off Cape Cod. How can you compete with that, >> but a lot of people don't want to do that? >> How did you do a survey on that? >> I don't want to. >> Legally, I'm not supposed to argue with >> No, that that's the people always kind
of say people don't want it. I think you should say I don't want to do it, but people might. And that's what we say when people comes through the tour and they finally understand how the system works. It's going to the toilet and peeing and pooping like you normally do and it just goes into a container and
there's no mechanical part. There's nothing and they get it. >> There were 20 There are about 20 or 21,000 houses in Felmouth. >> We don't need to do >> There were about 200 No, I'm just doing a percentage wise. There were about 200 perhaps volunteers
initially for this recent study and the one 10 years ago which was different there were only 10. >> No there was not. There was 110 that we started with then they had to change all their toilets in their house to equate toilets and they only got $5,000 and people say I can't afford to spend
another $20,000 for this. That's why I mean we were part of that program so I know what the reasons were. would taking a sample from the tank full of urine before it gets pumped out and measuring the concentration
and then knowing how many gallons are removed from the tank. Would that give you the same load value? >> It doesn't get the load of the feces and the load of the gray water. Okay. So in
our case, we only measure gray water in fact because >> I was I was I was I guess I was focusing more on just pure urine diversion and not >> right >> the the thing I'm just it seems to me like >> most of it is in urine. Well, the the
issue of sampling, >> you know, there's an exercise of having to retrofit deboxes on existing homes so that they can be easily sampled. And then there's the question of the frequency of the sample in order for it
to be valid. Like I I I don't not trying to guess it whether you need to sample monthly for nitrogen or quarterly for nitrogen or weekly. It seems to me if you were sampling just at the urine diversion I'm sticking just urine diversion. If you just sampled at the
urine diversion tank and knew the volume moved, you would know the pounds captured. >> Yeah, that's what we did on our first study a couple years ago. Remember that that study? >> So, so, so there's more than one way to measure load. Yeah. >> On urine diversion. Okay. Currently,
the people that are using QBs, where do they dispose of the urine? They're supposed to put it in a container which we we got the approval by the board of health. There's a container that they put it in outside and then waste it comes and picks it up. >> Have you has that been monitored? It is
that >> it has not been monitored. It's a voluntary. Some people want to have it use it instead of fertilizers and other people want to >> It's an open question. They just you didn't measure it. That's all. >> Yeah. No, that's >> where does the >> A lot of people don't actually want to get rid of it because they use it
instead of buying fertilizer. Where does the compost go from the compost you told? >> The compost is monitored after two years. It has it's considered by the World Health Organization as safe. So it sits in a container untouched for two
years >> on the property >> on the property and then in our case it's in the basement. >> So So if someone puts a composting toilet in >> Yes. They would have to move the compost from the compost and toilet to a separate bin. >> Well, keep it for two years. Same bin.
>> It's the same bin. Okay. Um uh and it aside, setting aside the costs, sewers and source separation are equally effective at removing nitrogen.
Okay, Ed, >> I think it's, you know, established science that this can work. No question about it. Um, for this to get any
uh chance to replace or become a option for an IIA, the state would have to accept it as IIA or uh better than a title 5 under the same criteria, the same monitoring that IAS have it and
that would be the route. Couple of years ago, we've had a working group on urine diversion and worked with the state and they said, "Yep, if you do it 50 for the three years, you can get approval as an IIA." And it was a reasonable cost
program developed by members of this committee and Masttec. And before we could get anything through, town meetings, so many bells and whistles were attached to that study that it became a $2 million boondoggle and never
got off the ground. Had that succeeded, we'd be more than halfway into the three-year trial and well along to the approval. But the issues, as have been mentioned by others, are getting widespread adoption by the public. it it's not going to happen because of
the limitations the impact on resale value to the property and it's certainly a cheaper way to do it scientifically it would work you'd have to get the D to buy off on the load calculation and that'd be a great idea if anybody could
ever get the state to move but I won't be alive long enough for that to happen and there was that study about 10 12 years ago ago in Falmouth when Little Pond was being sewered. I lived in the Little Pond sewer service area. I was
intimately acquainted with it and people that were on the sewer line plan that were going to have to pay the betterment and have to disrupt their property and abandon the septic tank and and all of that expense which would total in the
neighborhood of 20 to $25,000 or more depending on the property. They wouldn't have to do it if they adopted eco toilets. A huge incentive beyond the $5,000 subsidy for the equipment. 20 to $25,000.
You would not have to ever connect to the sewer out of 15 or 1600 homes that were sewed in the little pond. Zero. Nobody took advantage of. Wow. I could save 20,000 or more. They would
not say >> no one no one bid on that. A big reason why well a guy I know a good friend who was uh in his 70s at the time looked at it right until the last minute and said uh-uh cuz he was worried his his
children were going to inherit the property and they were going to have this mongrel system and not be connected to a sewer. Nobody did it. That's the public opinion that isn't going to change it. No. No doubt the science is sound and it
can work, but uh getting the D to buy off on it and getting public acceptance in particular, I don't see it ever happening. Just one minor criticism of the methodology of this part of your analysis said, okay,
shoe pond did a before analysis of how many pounds of nitrogen? 35. And I think Earl, you stated and quite correctly that it was a lot more than the state thought was coming out of a single family home. That data is missing from
your 13 odd participants. You didn't do it before. How much are they actually emitting? And you said, "Well, they're down to five or less, but you don't know what they started with before they started using the devices." So from an engineering technical standpoint, that data is very important because if you're
going to say, "Oh, better than 90% reduction." You don't know what you started with. So you can't make that statement. >> Well, we did this with one person. That's the only person who had never done anything before. All the other people had done some kind of urine diversion before. So the before and
after would not work. >> Right. >> So only one person had never done anything and before and they and she her reduction was 85%. >> And got up. And it's ultimately the load that matters of what's left. That's ultimately the only only important point
is what is in the load. >> Ken, um well, you know, you do you've guys are fighting the good fight and you've clearly shown that nitrogen is removed from the debox. But that
nitrogen is still exist. It was produced by those humans that occupied the house. their production is exactly the same as it was before you you know whether they regardless of the system they had and the question comes on
I think your analysis is incomplete in that it doesn't deal with the disposal if they are using it as fertilizer it's in the watershed it's making it will some portion of that will make its way to the estuary
if they are shipping it off Cape >> they're using as fertilizer on your property. >> You just instead of fertilizer instead of other fertilizer. >> Yes. I But they they shouldn't be using other fertilizer either. That's the That's the point. We're trying to reduce fertilizer use in these sensitive
embainments around these sensitive embainments. So, um if it's being shipped off Cape, we need to take into account the economics of that. And it certainly can work on a small scale as you've shown whether it can work on a
large municipal scale with a thousand homes. I think that's the the question that needs to be further explored. And then everyone else has mentioned all the other issues which you know they're all legitimate. If the economics is really good, maybe you'll have more public
acceptance. You're working hard to promote public acceptance. There are better fixtures now. So certainly uh that encourages the use compared to you know some of these earlier studies uh the closer to a conventional fixture
that someone has in their home the more easily they're likely to adopt this uh when they compare costs of an IIA or hooking up to the sewer to uh retrofitting I think you come out ahead
with your end diversion uh if we have acceptance so that they aren't mandated by DP uh to hook up if in other words if these things can count as best available nitrogen reducing technology.
>> Well, this slide shows that >> it shows that you can reduce what goes in through the debox. We have to figure out what to do with the waste once it's produced. Well, what about the waste from a sewer plant or what about >> the waste from the sewer plant is ditrified?
>> No, that's the nitrogen. >> 90% of that nitrogen, it goes to the back to the atmosphere through the waste tertiary treatment process and the rest will go into Vineyard Sound where it will be dispersed. That is the plan currently. You believe you believe you
believe that the wastewater treatment plant does not reduce nitrogen. Yes, it reduces a lot of nitrogen and some of it goes in the air but some of it is in the affluent and some of it in the sludge and we do not know how much of that is. We only know the end in this in we do
know that we we >> don't know how much is in in goes in the air. You do not know how much is in the sledge. We we do there's precise information on how much >> then I never go >> moves through the plants >> what the final uh what the final concentration is in the effluent that's
monitored very routinely >> uh Amy has to report on that all the time >> and uh the sludge I'm sure is also accounted for. >> No, it's not. And there's stuff in it. >> No, the sludge goes off.
>> Same as urine, right? It goes off. It it that is essentially your process. You remove it, >> take it somewhere else. >> Yeah. In and in in these systems if you would do this um a company like wasted company would
remove the urine and take it out of the waterershed and they would turn it into fertilizer somewhere and sell it. They will take the compost out of the composting toilets, take it off and they would put it in a >> What does that cost? $120 per year per person to pasteurize it and
about what was it? >> I think it was $2.50 to transport the amount of urine from a person full time off Cape 70 miles to the same distance as the incinerator is now for the sludge. >> We have all these
>> they're processing this urine 70 miles off the Cape. >> No, I did that only just to compare with the sludge that's struck for 70 miles. And right now a a lot of the sleds might not even go to the incinerator because there's not enough room and then it goes even further. You >> use that sort of back to my the question
I had which which I I tried to ascertain >> for the urine diversion that's happening now. >> Where does the what how does it get get collected? Where does it go and what does it become? >> There's a company called wasted. They operate in several states. They will
come and pump urine out of a container off your property. They will pasteurize it, make it safe to use, kill the pathogens. >> Well, I think that's the next step for us. We need to hear from them. >> Could you do this for 2,000 homes? >> You know, I'd like to know. And what would it cost?
>> But they already do it for thousands of party porter parties. >> It might work great. I'm not saying it doesn't. I just want to know. You know, I think we need to confirm. >> It's in my table. >> The the the economics of that. >> And they make it also in granular fertilizer. And now they're starting to
make it as a a concentrate. Take all the water out. >> Boston does the same with their sludge. They make it into a granular fertilizer. >> So Ken, when I did those calculate, >> Hold on. Hold on. >> Are you done, Ken? >> I'm done. >> Okay. Thank you.
>> I I I'd like to get let the audience chime in before I do a second round over here unless it's >> well was related to the question of cost because you know a few months ago I did that uh set of calculations for sewers and IAS and and I actually put in the
cost for things like collection and cost of toilets for for urine diversion based on some of the their colleagues in Vermont had a lot of rigorous studies done. So we have some of that >> analysis already done and it had the carting costs that was the big one in
addition to the fixtures and the plumbing. So it's out there the numbers are known on a per home basis whether it's one or two toilets. >> Right. >> Right. I'm going to go to the audience. Jed had his hand up at one point in the middle. So J to the to the microphone.
>> Thank you. >> Sure. >> Uh here as a citizen or a member of the board of health. um certain things for certain things. So, speaking as chair of the board of health, I want to note that we recently
um approved the use of a composting toilet um along with some other aspects. it was a little complicated um as a denitrifying system with the provision
the requirement that the compost be removed from the property rather than composted on site. So that is total removal of a um of the waste in this the nitrogen from the waste in this in this context. Um
I also speaking as a member of the board of health want to be very clear that um IIA is used very loosely many times. Um and I think we want to going forward um specify
on-site denitrifying systems as different from um what we would consider advanced systems. Um, and urine diversion could be part of an advanced system, but it is not an it's not a denitrifying on-site denitrifying
system. So, I think being more precise in all of our language, all of our proposals, all of the regulatory documents that we have going forward, we're starting to use I'm going to talk with Scott and be be very clear that
we're going to be talking about advanced systems, for example, or advanced treatment systems and not just do the catchall IIA because um uh I think that it as we go through this iterative
design of all these different sorts of alternative systems. Yes. Um that they all do use different technologies. Some of them may be just purely trucking. Um but then speaking as a citizen not as a member of
>> Can I talk to this this nomenclature if I can? >> Yes. Um, in the course of my career, we went from wastewater sledge to bioolids and it took some agreement and adoption. I do believe the DP has been looking at
how they want to refer to systems. I think the watershed plans that are coming forward, they've been wrestling with a similar issue and I would suggest if the board of health has an opinion on this that may be communicating with the wastewater superintendent and find out where the
>> um Absolutely. And we have not had a we have not had a full discussion >> so so that you wind up with the same nomenclature at the end of the day whether it's nitrogen reducing systems or what >> it's very important that we use >> uh uh accurate and nomenclature um
speaking as um a citizen rather than a precinct 2 rather than chair of the board of health um I think that regulation on kilograms um uh makes a lot more sense given that our calcul calculations are all on um
total maximum daily loads which are in kilograms and not in a flow. And so um uh the board of health has started um talking about getting flow measurements from from some of these um on-site
denitrifying systems. Um I want to note um with regards to the data that Hilda and Earl just presented um and the variability and the sampling locations um the variability of on-site denitrifying systems is quite high. It
depends very much on the operator. Uh it turns out um George Hoyfelder has comp compiled an awful lot of data um through the the county. you gave us a presentation, so we're we're up to speed. >> And and so um uh the variability from a
urine diversion system um is pro quite possibly >> lower than um uh than it would be from a even a a properly operating um uh denrifying system. Um so I um
unfortunately I would like to comment on some of your later things, but I have to go feed kids. So I'll see you hang out for a few minutes. >> Stick around. >> Very quick comment. The amount of >> he was ask a question. >> You mentioned the board of health recently approving a composting toilet
in some situation. Was that in connection with your last winter's regulation that houses in a certain >> category? And does that mean that's essentially now something you would do for anyone in the
same situation? It's a in all of these cases it's a case by case because every um every IIA system and that would um that where there would be require and I'm being in their case I'm being using the term IIA in terms of the legal term
um all all of them have to come before the board for approval even if there are no other variances required. So in any con case where there would be the requirement in our regulations for an IIA system
including for example the addition of a bedroom new flow um they would come to us and we would look at it on a case- by case basis that that was two separate there was two hearings there was a continued or a continued hearing over two meetings so it took quite a quite a
bit of time to to iron out details so >> so do I understand correctly I just want to be clear because this is something Hilly and Earl had requested that someone can come before you in an area where they're required to do an IIA. You would accept
>> we would consider >> consider a composting toilet in lie of an IIA and they would never need to put in the IIA. >> We would consider that. >> Yes. And it just >> would have to be the only toilet in that
house or all toilets would have to be to a composting fee. give people a choice. >> Yeah. >> For you to approve it. >> Uh it would I'm trying to remember exactly how we did this. Um we would not uh allow a a flush toilet
>> directly to the I think your compadre remembers what you >> Yeah, we would not require We would not allow a flush toilet directly separately from the composting. But I'm not an attorney. But even if you avoid evade writing this up as a consistent set of
rules, you'll create a bunch of case law. Yes. Which will be the rule. >> Uh it is precedent. Yes, we are. We acknowledge that, but we also it's precedent and so we'd have to sort of see how things go. Um and and yes, um
cost considerations are quite significant in this context. um the difference between, you know, um say $30,000 for an on-site denitrifying component versus um yeah, it might be a significant
incentive, shall we say? >> It could be. >> Thank you, >> doctor. >> And again, let me know whether you're speaking as a board of health member or a citizen. George Toplos precinct 3 and I happen to
have been at the board of health meeting and I'm on the board of health but I'm not speaking for the board of health. The folks who came to us with the composting toilet they'd had one for a long time. They were going to add another one but what they had been doing
is taking all the waste from the composting toilet and spreading it on their lawn. >> Oh, good. which as one of the two of you said, that's just like or even worse than putting it through a septic system. It's just
>> uh but it's certainly not it certainly wasn't removed. It was still placed on their lawn. One of the questions I've always had about composting toilets, having used one at a friend's cabin a lot, um, is if you want to have it sit
for two years for this maturation until you can use it, you either have to remove it and put it in something else or stop using the composting toilet or have two chambers underneath and say, "We're going to use chamber A. We're going to turn chamber A off and use
chamber B for two years. then take chamber A and and throw it on the wherever. Um the other uh points we the specific house we've made it a test case. We were very careful to write up how uh the circumstances of how it's
going to be used. It's going to be the urine's going to be taken away by mastec and we uh reviewed their system but we haven't seen the final system yet which is going to be reviewed again by the board of health uh for the liquids. Um
I don't think we care about how much is removed and taken away. We care about how much nitrogen is not removed. Um, if somebody has 15 people in their house and they
remove a lot, they still have 15 people in their house. It's what they deposit that we care about, not what they don't deposit. Um, and I have a question about your sampling. How often did you sample?
How often did you measure the flow? And how were those put together in time? Because unless you're measuring the flow continuously, measuring the concentration continuously, and integrating to get a mass, you really
don't have a really good idea because there's probably huge fluctuations. We ran the dishwasher and that's when you happen to measure the urine con the nitrogen concentration and the flow or we haven't done anything and we had 12
guests and everybody peed yesterday and that's when you measured it. It's >> the load. >> Oh no, I know that. But what I'm getting at is determining the load is very difficult and it's not you can't measure a concentration four times a year.
measure a flow four times a year and say you know what the load was because you have no idea what the load was. You know what it might have been at four instances in time. Uh uh the other thing is I was dismayed to learn but I'm sure
80% of the people in this room know this. The board of health's authority stops at the house foundation. So all this stuff about the board of health being concerned about plumbing and for example having a black water and a graywater plumbing system, we can't even
discuss I mean we could discuss it but we have no authority inside the house plumbing and neither does the town. That's all the state plumbing code. >> Correct. >> So I'd be interested in how you actually think you measured not to I don't mean to disparrage it. It's a great idea, but
I don't know want to know how you measure >> day talking. >> Yeah. >> How many times? >> Folks, folks, you either speak to the microphone or or what? >> Okay, Ken's got a question. Well, I just
wanted to since since I was blamed here for not blamed, I cited uh for the issue of what do you do with uh with with either the compost or the urine or so forth. It's really a complicated question. If
you retain it on the site and it's compost, there's a lot of possible fates. If you spread it on your lawn, some of it is going to be taken up in vegetation. Then what happens to the stuff that's in vegetation? Is it incorporated into a tree and that's a
long lived sink for that or or or is it in grass that rapidly decomposes and the nitrogen goes back down into the soil? Then there's all the soil processes, ditrification, nitrification, so forth. With a uh on standard on-site title 5
system, the disposal up until they had leech fields was below the soil layer. That's one issue because that shortcircuited all of those soil processes and so you had a lot more input the uh directly to groundwater. Um
with leech fields the operation is perhaps better but I think there's still a lot of of direct release that rapidly gets to groundwater. What we really care about is what gets to the estuary and there's attenuation along the way and that's a lot of debate about how much
attenuation occurs and whether it matters whether you're close or far and all of that uh with regard to the receiving waters. Um so the the the nice thing about the sewering is it just gets it out of the watershed and then has a process for actually converting nitrogen
to nitrogen gas. Nitrogen organic nitrogen inorganic nitrogen. so forth converted to nitrogen gas. As long as you have a good way of disposing of that nitrogen that's uh you know that's in urine or in in
your compost. Obviously this counts as a successful method for uh ameliorating the inputs to estuaries. But it really you do have to think about where is that stuff going after you collect it. We
should do the same thing for sewers because right now it doesn't only go to gas. It also goes to nitrogen's gas to methane. So we're sending some of that nitrogen into >> contains no nitrogen >> but the nitrogen is confir made into that. So right now we adding greenhouse
gases. So it goes somewhere. Then the the sludge goes into it. >> What what is the greenhouse gas? N2O. Yes, there is N2O production for sure. >> Methane and nitrous oxide. And then it goes into sludge. So it goes
somewhere to some other waterershed because the sludge goes to another one either on land or it goes to an incinerator and then the toxic ashes become landfilled somewhere. The material doesn't go away in a sewer. Only some nitrogen a great burst of nitrogen goes in.
>> It also doesn't go away in urine diversion. That's my point. It doesn't. >> But if it's if it's replacing fertilizer and it's made into fertilizer, it is replacing nitrogen that otherwise had to be made. And the nitrogen fertilizer
that you put on your lawn is going to be much more uh detrimental to the environment than any of the nitrogen that we might make from urine because it has no PAS. It has no a lot of things that are now in the bags from sludge.
Urine contains PAS. >> Yeah. >> Very very very little compared to any >> contains PAS. It contains drug residues. Yes. That people take and so does by the way waste water in general. But if pharmaceuticals go into waste water they
cannot be um handled. If it goes on the land that is they proven it gets absorbed by organisms in such a way that it no longer goes into the food and is damaging. That is what Rich Earth did as their study with the University of Michigan.
>> Again, my only point is your debug study shows it doesn't go, you know, directly into the soil there. You're sequestering it. It's going somewhere. What matters is what happens next. >> Ken, at this point, you made your point. >> Yeah. Okay. >> She she's not totally accepting your
point and she's countering and you're just you're both being argumentative. So, >> Amy's had a question. I got you. I got you next. Amy's put had her hand up. Amy, are you speaking as the wastewater superintendent? >> I am indeed. Uh wastewater superintendent. So, two things. Uh there
was a scenario in here for Great Pond um which talked about um aquaculture removing something like 5,000 I don't remember what the >> 338 uh kilograms per acre and that is done by the asmast project that was
done. So any I I dis I don't agree I don't believe that that was a realistic scenario. I guess I don't I don't agree with the the numbers in that scenario. Um and um I I um I also
so I I can see that urine diversion um I think I think that if the board of health and the state agree that that is an an acceptable type
of um of nitrogen removing septic system or you know the replacement for a septic system. I think that that can be part of that can be one of the options for people who want it in the IIA required areas or in the nitrogen removing septic
system areas. The problem I have is this being presented as a an alternative to sewering uh in these densely developed areas where 100% of the nitrogen removal needs to be required. So I think I I
think there is place in Falmouth for hundreds even even a thousand or more people to op to select this option in an area where nitrogen removing septic systems are are going to be required if
that is an alternative that's accepted by the board of health in the state but I strongly object to it being offered as an alternative to sewing on places like Scoore s or the Great Pond Peninsula on
T on the um on the Aapesc Peninsula. And in these these areas where sewing makes sense because of the density and the the proximity to the pond and because of the amount of nitrogen which has to be removed. We can't remove half of it. We
have to remove all of it and deal with it offsite. So that's that's my primary uh >> statement. Gentleman in the corner again step up identify yourself. >> If you're representing the board, stay the board. Otherwise, just give your name and
>> Okay. >> Chris Chris Inway. I am a citizen and uh part of the uh debach study. Uh I've been uh diverting for a couple of years now. Actually, I think Steve, I think you picked up my QB when you went up to Vermont a couple years ago. And uh
>> I'm glad I could be of service. >> Thank you. I'll be going up next week on other business, but if you need another one, I perhaps could swing by. >> So, um, yeah, couple of comments on this. Um, public acceptance is
definitely the problem here because, um, I've introduced this to multiple friends and most of them have said no way that they're going to do it. And, uh, that's that's a problem. And I my sense is that
they don't know what's coming down the road in terms of cost if they have to install an AI system. That is going to be the thing that is going to push them over the edge to get into a UD system or an alternative
system. I mean, these are great proposals about some kind of financial incentive for nitrogen and things like that, but um I think they've got to see $50,000 plus 20 $2,000 a year for
maintenance on a AI system or something. They've got to see those numbers before they say, "Okay, I'm going to do a $2,000 retrofit in my house and put that toilet in there." Um So from my experience, you know, using
the QB or my bucket containers, you pee a lot. 100 gallons a year pretty much per person. You need big tanks to store all that stuff. I think I I think the easiest thing to
do is to install a whole bunch of urinals and tanks in people's homes. you you collect the urine, you can monitor concentration so you have a fixed u amount of nitrogen that's being removed
and um it's a very lowcost solution. Now from from your study I believe I have flush toilets and multiple people have used them. My my nitrogen load is 2 pounds a year right now. >> It's really low. two pounds a year and I
use a flush toilet a lot and I also use the urine diversion system. So there's there's such a a a huge reduction of the nitrogen load in my house doing that. In terms of I've had the uh wasted um
pumping service uh service my my 55gallon drum once and honestly I do use it for land fertilizer around trees and things. Uh primarily these days I've got a tarp on the ground. I've got lots of wood chips and I put some of that on the
wood chips and so it's absorbed by the wood and then I use that as compost around plants and and so that's my alternative disposal on-site disposal system. Um uh anyhow I I really appreciate the work that you all have
done and and you know we are paying the the participants of have also helped fund this pro this uh this uh project that that they're they're doing there but but you've done great work on that. Thank thanks very much.
>> Other comments from the audience? Maggie I just eyeball it from my my right to my left, your left to my right. Hi, Maggie McGaw um citizen uh precinct 7 in wo and I just want to say um we
have also been participating in urine diverting using QBs now for a couple of years at least since the earlier study and and I think it's really important for us all to start crediting our fellow residents with the
common sense to see this as a viable option. I think, you know, I I remember the very first conversations I ever heard about this and somebody stood up at a meeting in the library and said, you know, we tried this back in, you
know, 2012 or 2015 and nobody would participate. And I think the big difference is it didn't feel urgent at that point. It now feels urgent. It's now very clear that these changes have to happen. People have to um you know
they're looking down the road and seeing that they're going to have to adopt something if they're not in a sewing area. And I think, you know, all of us who spend time thinking about this and talking about it need to begin thinking
and saying out loud that people will accept this if they begin to see the comparative economics and the simplicity. I have to say it's a different kettle of fish to or a
different um container of urine um to you know be diverting pee into a QB that's in on the floor in your bathroom and then you have to walk it out to your driveway and pour it into a uh you know
a a barrel as compared to actually having a system in your house where the pee goes into a toilet, it ends up in a tank. Not different fundamentally from a compost, excuse me, from a um uh what
from the the systems that we all have, the septic systems that somebody will come and pump out and take away. And so I really think that the the the you know, people always talk about the ick factor. There's just no ick factor left
if you've got a porcelain fixture in your uh bathroom and somebody takes pumps it out and takes it away. >> Where does your urine where does your urine currently go? >> Uh I use wasted. I have wasted come and and pump out. And I'll also say I have a
composting toilet. We built a new addition on our house and we put a composting toilet in and largely because George Hoyfelder looked at me in a conversation. He said, "Why are you not considering a composting toilet?" Like,
you dumb person. Um, and and that made me stop because I had been thinking, I don't really want to interact with my biological uh wastes. And it has proved to be, you know, pretty satisfying to have this
system in the basement and feel like, okay, that's zero nitrogen going into the groundwater. That's it. Thank you. >> Kim, >> citizen or committee?
>> Uh, Kim Kard, precinct 8. Uh so we've been talking about this issue and you've been talking about this you issue for years. I think you started in 2023 and u I credit you for uh helping to
begin the process that has led to mastec and we haven't really talked here about the fact that mastec is moving forward. There will be a demonstration project in this town. Um things move slowly. Uh but I've been speaking with Brian Horesley
regularly. Uh we have a the largest toilet manufacturer in the country, American toilet. It's it's um a nice looking toilet. Uh they're before the state plumbing board uh now and I think
it will be approved. It's a nice flush toilet. Um they are dealing with all the different regulatory issues. I won't go into it, but um I think you know, Ed, you referred to the $2 million proposal
as a boondoggle, which I sort of take some umbrage at given that uh and now we're down to a $413,000 mastec project. Um, this town, you know, spent
uh 55, you know, is spending $55 million uh to sewer, you know, 800. How many How many homes? >> 810. >> It's approximately >> approximately 800 homes. You know, um >> I'm just going to help you out here momentarily. What's the right number, Amy?
>> It's about 800 properties. >> 800 properties. >> But are you spending 55? So, >> it's complicated the project cost, but there's the loss. >> Maybe it'll end up being 40. Maybe it'll be $40 million, whatever. So, um I guess
I guess my point is, and you know, I'm thinking of Alan Robinson here, like Allan has done a great job in this town about pushing source separation. Blue bin, green bin. Source separation
makes sense. Um so I you know I applaud Hilden Earl as you know pioneers pushing for source separation. Um the and there's a reason that the European toilet manufacturers aren't uh actively pursuing this market.
They're so busy selling urine diversion toilets and setting up urine diversion systems in Europe and Australia and Japan. They're they're so busy um and you know elsewhere. So, this is a technology that's not complicated. I
agree with Amy that it's another tool in the toolbox and um I think it's going to be uh much better for the environment. Um and so, you know, just I've said at
town meeting, I've said here before, we're talking about the possibility of of mandating that about 6,000 homeowners in Felmouth install IA septic systems. $1 million 400 >> at 250 days per year. If one were done
per day, that would take 24 years. 24 years. Do two a day, it takes 12 years. So, I'm hoping that the mastec study happens, we have 25 people who participate in this project. um the way
these kind of social changes happen including recycling which who who thought 50 years ago we'd have a blue bin and a green bin. So these things take time and my perspective on this is we have time to
demonstrate that this is a valuable tool in the toolbox and I think it will happen. I think the economics of it are going to be critically important. Um, and again, I thank you for
having these conversations and for kicking off the study that Mass is going to do and I hope good things come of it. Um, and I'm I'm optimistic. Um, and I know these things uh take time. And in
terms of public acceptance, I have always felt that the QB while effective is not a great advertisement for urine diversion. Um, and I think this nice toilet that this large company is
producing will be a much better advertisement uh for this approach and I think it will help uh enormously with public acceptance. So, I'll just stop there. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Kim. Other other commenters from
the the audience? >> Okay, >> I have one quick comment just so people get an idea. The compost one gets from um a composting toilet that's in our case urine diversion is one bushel of compost per year per person. We're
talking very small quantities. Um yes, the bin is totally separate. We have a bin that gets removed and put aside for two years. And Phoenix works a little bit differently, but they also have all kinds of regulations of how to
dispose of it that have been approved. So I just want to have people idea that it's not like a huge amount. It's one bushel per person per year of compost and that can be used after two years for any purpose on the landscape uh for
flowers, for food, for anything. It can be used sooner than two years, but it can then not be used for food production, but it can use be for ornamentals and trees and has to be 8 in under soil. And those are the regulations from the World Health
Organization. >> Um, a procedural item, you need to forward to me uh a PDF of your presentation so it can get posted to the water quality management website. >> You mean the slides? slides. >> Yeah. Okay. No problem.
>> I presumed it was a PowerPoint, but maybe it's >> Yes, it is. >> Okay. >> Thank you very much for the time. >> All right. So, we are at 6 roughly at 6:20.
This meeting ends in 10 minutes. So, um, I'm going to accept the motion to move items three, four, and five to the next meeting. >> So, moved. >> All those in favor. Oh, second. >> Second. >> Okay.
All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> I. >> Okay. Um, I'm going to try to take up item six, uh, a discussion and a vote to approve the minutes of May 27th. >> Also move. Okay. Second. All those in favor signify by saying I.
>> I. I. >> All those opposed. Appears that we have a unanimous vote on the minutes. And uh item seven is a vote to adjurnn. >> Also move. >> Okay. No discussion. Second. >> Second.
>> Second it. >> Okay. >> All right. >> All those in favor of adjourning signify by saying I. >> I. Amen. Thank you.