Ringside at the battle of The Loophole 



The malady has been diagnosed, but 

 some say the patient may expire before 

 authorities stop feuding and agree on 

 how to treat it. Much of coastal North 

 Carolina is fouling itself with the 

 flushing of its toilets. 



There are no fewer than four 

 heavyweight agencies in the fray: the 

 N.C. Division of Environmental 

 Management, the N.C. Division of 

 Health Services, the Coastal Resources 

 Commission and the U.S. Environ- 

 mental Protection Agency. Each 

 claims to champion the same cause: 

 protecting the environment and ensur- 

 ing the welfare of the population. 



The main event has been billed as 

 the "health departments versus the 

 state." County health departments, 

 under Health Services, are battling 

 Environmental Management for the 

 authority to govern sewage disposal in 

 their communities. Presently, con- 

 struction of a sewerage system with a 

 capacity larger than 3,000 gallons a 

 day requires a permit from Environ- 



mental Management. Permits for 

 smaller systems are let by local health 

 departments. 



Both sides are bitter over what 

 editorial writers have described as 

 "The Loophole." The Loophole allows 

 some builders to skirt authority and 

 construct waste-disposal systems. 



State Environmental Management 

 officials say The Loophole exists 

 because local health departments don't 

 stand up to local building interests. 

 "Local health departments are a lot 

 more subject to local pressures," says 

 Stan Taylor, Environmental Manage- 

 ment's acting coordinator for permits 

 and engineering. "After all, many of 

 these water-quality problems came 

 about because they weren't handled 

 locally." 



Taylor says that in many growing 

 coastal communities, condominium 

 complexes and other developments are 

 avoiding Environmental Manage- 

 ment's structures by providing each 

 living unit or building with its own 



septic tank. Local health departments 

 can issue permits for dozens of septic 

 tanks in these cases, he says, since no 

 one system exceeds 3,000 gallons. En- 

 vironmental Management, he says, 

 won't allow more than three living 

 units or 1,200 gallons of septic-tank 

 effluent per acre. 



"We have a density requirement on 

 septic tanks that is considerably less 

 than what local health departments 

 allow," Taylor says. He says that 

 biological sampling in waters adjacent 

 to concentrations of septic tanks 

 almost always yields high levels of 

 coliform bacteria, regarded by law as 

 the indicators of health hazzards in 

 drinking water and shellfish. 



"Wherever you have this rampant 

 development with septic tanks, you're 

 going to find closed shellfish waters," 

 Taylor says. 



Page Benton, chief of the division's 

 environmental operations section, says 

 the 3,000-gallon threshold represents 

 an arbitrary attempt on the part of the 



'You can't drain 

 Water in water' 



Few are closer to the soils of Car- 

 teret County than Alton Rouse and his 

 son, Alton Rouse, Jr. Each year they 

 install or repair several hundred septic 

 systems on sands, clays and even 

 dredge spoil. Too many of those 

 systems, they believe, are bound to 

 fail. They also believe that the public 

 is not really aware of the problem. 



"A lot of people come down here to 

 live and don't even know they have a 

 septic tank," Rouse, Jr. says. "You 

 can ask them, and a lot of times they 

 say, 'No, I don't have a septic tank.' 

 But they do, most of them, and they 

 need to know how it works." 



With 12 years of experience in his 

 father's septic tank service, Rouse, Jr. 

 believes a properly sited septic tank is 

 the best way to dispose of residential 

 waste. 



"You find systems that work thirty 

 years without a minute's trouble," he 

 says. "Some never work at all." 



Photo by Neil Caudle 



Alton Rouse and son 



