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New DHEC design standards allow more development on problem soils
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
When a piece of property north of Goose Creek wouldn’t allow developers to use a traditional septic system, they worked with engineers to use the site’s natural characteristics and find a wastewater treatment solution rather than force the site to adapt to a design that would have allowed fewer homes.
Wassamassaw Plantation, the 352-acre development at the end of Jedburg Road, has about as many soil characteristics as can be found in the Lowcountry landscape. The terrain, which descends 33 feet across half a mile, offers not only diverse topography but also a variety of soil types.
A soil assessment made by Land Management Group of S.C., which furnished data to BP Barber & Associates, an engineering firm working with developers on conceptual layout, permitting and construction, found some of the soil types were not suitable for traditional septic drain fields.
“That made the design of each site very unique,” said Frank Iwanicki, an engineer with BP Barber.
Each home site at Wassamassaw Plantation had to be evaluated for an individual water treatment system, something that would not have been allowed until fairly recently, Iwanicki
said.
A relatively new S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control design standard allows a licensed soil classifier to evaluate the soil on individual lots and report findings to an engineer, who then designs the treatment and disposal system. Homeowners who purchase lots in Wassamassaw will be required to purchase their individual water treatment system for about $15,000 as part of their home site package. There will be no tap fees or capacity reservation fees such as those required by municipal water treatment systems.
“It opened up a tremendous amount of land that was undeveloped. A lot of that was in coastal areas where there really were no other options. So a lot of premium land became available for development,” Iwanicki said. “Previously, if you could not get your soil approved by DHEC for a septic system, that was the end of it. They would not allow you to build a house.”
BP Barber selected the Orenco AdvanTex system for the Wassamassaw site. The treatment technology allows the developer, Wassamassaw Plantation LLC, and project manager, Twingate Properties, to build 100 homes instead of only about 20 if they were using septic systems.
Of the 352 acres at Wassamassaw Plantation, 180 acres are wetlands.
“Obviously, going from 20 homes to 100 is certainly noticeable to the developer financially,” Iwanicki said.
Permitting also is faster for individual wastewater treatment systems than for community systems, which must be permitted by the state in the same manner that a municipal wastewater treatment plant is permitted
“The biggest difference for the on-site systems is that they’re permitted locally by DHEC Environmental Health,” Iwankicki said. “The community systems are permitted by DHEC out of Columbia. You have to submit a whole engineering report and that whole approval process takes a few months. It really was a timesaver for the developer. To permit a community system could run nine months to 18 months, whereas this could take two to four weeks.”
Iwanicki said that although individual water treatment systems are owned by individual property owners, his company requires that a homeowners association be established to regulate maintenance of the systems.
“We still wanted that control,” Iwanicki said. “I think it is something that needs to be done wisely and managed well.”
Bryan Kizer, another BP Barber engineer, said Wassamassaw’s wastewater system also is a very “green” treatment method.
“This is cleaner than the treated effluent from a municipal waste water treatment plant,” Kizer said. “If you looked at it in a glass, it would look pretty much like drinking water. It won’t bind the drain field and allows you to compact the footprint of your drain field, so you’re able to save some space.
“In a standard septic system, you have to cut down trees … you can’t have tree roots or anything in that area. With this system, you can work around trees, and it provides irrigation for your lawn.”
The treated water is dispersed through irrigation tubing placed six inches underground, Kizer said. After installation, the system is remotely monitored and controlled through Orenco’s VeriComm monitoring system. The neighborhood homeowners’ association will have a service contract with the local Orenco distributor, Coastal Carolina Wastewater Solutions.
The service contract costs are typically the same as a municipal wastewater treatment bill at about $30 to $40 per month.
“This system has a smart device hooked up to a phone line. If there’s a problem with the pump or any control on the system, it automatically dials out to an operator and notifies the operator via a pager that they have a problem,” Kizer said.
“They can also monitor it through the Internet. With a standard septic system, basically you put it in the ground and people forget about it until there’s a problem and it starts backing up in the yard. I think that’s another green aspect of this system.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@setcommedia.com.
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