This sort of surface level ivory tower "nothing that proclaims to be positive for the environment" attitude underpins so, so much of the bullshit that makes us all poorer and worse off.
>You mean to tell me the land of 10,000 lakes might have a shallow water table that might require mounds more often to prevent people poisoning groundwater with their literal shit? The horror.
The "land of 10k lakes" doesn't get it's water from the ground like a desert municipality. They have surface reservoirs and protected watershed areas to keep those clean enough.
The "ground" is effectively the filter. You want it to be full of shit. That's how a septic works. That's how basically all runoff cleansing measures (sand traps, grass buffers, etc, etc) work. You're basically using "nature" as the settling tanks of a water treatment plant. A septic is the same but underground.
The problem is high water table. But as long as the water table permits a septic is great.
>Without hard data about the site I'm probably going to side with the county on that one.
Did you ever think that maybe the reason the dude applied for the septic was because the engineer said "this property is great for a septic, let's do a septic"
Surely this government you think so highly of is capable of exercising judgement.
If not then why give them discretion in the first place?
What about the licensed engineer that must stamp the plans? Surely he is trustworthy? If not then why does the government enforce his license monopoly and force people to do business with him?
>As for your friend wanting to improve the lot but needs to do a lot of drainage fixes, he should lobby his community for property tax abatement to support the drainage improvements
Are you insane or just lying through your teeth. Nobody is gonna add a political advocacy side quest to an already overpriced minor improvement. They'll just bend over and take it and hope to make it up rent or resale.
>It's something we've ignored in a lot of our planning for a long time.
This used to be municipally managed. Landowners built drainage as they saw fit. Municipalities managed stuff like streams and culverts and ditches and whatnot, build flood control dams and holding ponds and the like.
Making it part of the permitting/development process is mostly an exercise in financial engineering (gets the obligation off the municipality) and is worse because you get patchwork of minimum viable solutions (that work poorly) instead of systems that are planned at the municipal or higher level to work well.
>Both of your major examples are probably selfish takes that harm their neighbors to save someone some money.
And peddling things that drive up the viability floor of development so you can feel good about saving the environment isn't.
Enjoy your $3k rent for a 500ft slum. Make sure you complain about "landlords" while you're at it.
You're competing with the person who isn't renting my buddy's ADU because the ADU never happened because the septic upgrade killed it, the minimum viable mound system got put in to save $$ and it has the capacity for the house and nothing more Y'all really served the public interest on that one.
> They have surface reservoirs
Sure sounds like potential issues for septic systems
> protected watershed areas
And they're protected by things like being choosy about approving septic systems I'd imagine
> The "ground" is effectively the filter.
And it requires so much "ground" to properly "filter", hence the mounds.
> The problem is high water table
So we both agree there's a high water table, and high water tables can give challenges for properly operating a septic system without poisoning your neighbor's water and lands
> why does the government enforce his license monopoly and force people to do business with him?
Because your runoff poisons the ground of the people around you. I'm sure they'd be singing a far different tune if their neighbors were dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground right against their property line. Oh but this is their right to dump their wastes...
> Nobody is gonna add a political advocacy side quest to an already overpriced minor improvement
Sounds like nobody really cares about that overpriced minor improvement.
> This used to be municipally managed. Landowners built drainage as they saw fit. Municipalities managed stuff like streams and culverts and ditches and whatnot, build flood control dams and holding ponds and the like
And then we've realized after 100 years of this its led to extremely bad outcomes of nobody actually paying attention to flooding issues and we get children washed down rivers and billions of dollars of damages on random thunderstorms.
> it has the capacity for the house and nothing more
Probably true, and should probably be connected to proper sewer systems to expand and have more density instead of just poisoning their neighbors.
Gotta love that ivory tower smarmy attitude.
>And it requires so much "ground" to properly "filter", hence the mounds.
There is no point in building up if the ground is sufficient.
MN has basically decided they're not gonna bother considering what that means and just make everyone do mounds at great expense.
>So we both agree there's a high water table, and high water tables can give challenges for properly operating a septic system without poisoning your neighbor's water and lands
That's tangential. Go tee up your dishonest strawman somewhere else.
>Because your runoff poisons the ground of the people around you. I'm sure they'd be singing a far different tune if their neighbors were dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground right against their property line. Oh but this is their right to dump their wastes...
If people are dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground that's a separate problem than organic waste.
Forcing everyone to manage runoff (which is a seperate issue from septics) like it's a problem by default when 99% of it is clean (seriously, how dirty is the average concrete sidewalk or shed roof or whatever other impermeable surface) wastes money.
Resources are not infinite. If you actually gave a shit about the environment you'd understand that there's other more effective stuff that money could be spent on.
>Probably true, and should probably be connected to proper sewer systems
At. What. Cost.
> to expand and have more density instead of just poisoning their neighbors.
Once again you don't get how it works. The whole point of a septic is that it's fine as long as you don't sink your well pipe through the leech field.
I'm not gonna bother picking your comment apart any further. It's a waste of my time.
I hope someday you buy property and seek to further develop it so that you may reap what you have sown in ignorance.
> Gotta love that ivory tower smarmy attitude.
When did, "I don't want people poisoning my water," become ivory tower smarmy attitude?
It was the tone of the reply, I would imagine.
> There is no point in building up if the ground is sufficient.
Sure sounds like it isn't, at least according to the county.
> we both agree there's a high water table
> That's tangential
Its fundamental to the decision of septic design, not tangential. Its not a dishonest strawman to bring up the core, fundamental concept at issue here.
> dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground that's a separate problem than organic waste
Yeah that's right, my waste is fine, their waste is a problem. Who cares if my neighbors have to drink my shit?
> you don't get how it works.
I sure do.
> The whole point of a septic is that it's fine as long as you don't sink your well pipe through the leech field.
If the ground water is too high, you'll have more problems. Like, say, potentially some random property in the land of 10,000 lakes.
> I hope someday you buy property and seek to further develop it
I already have, and I haven't purposefully flooded out or poisoned my neighbors to do it.
> I'm not gonna bother picking your comment apart any further.
I'd potentially have a different opinion if I actually had some real facts about the property other than just some random property in a place known to have a high water table having an issue getting septic permitted. You even said yourself its got a high water table at the property! It honestly doesn't seem surprising to me to see a place like that having an issue with septic systems. But just a "trust me bro gubmit bad" attitude doesn't really change my opinion.
Cool beans buddy. Have a good night.