The Awakened Interest in the
Sewer Ordinance
ROBERT H. CULVER, Vice President
TREVOR SAXON, Senior Engineer
Camp Dresser & McKee Inc.
Consulting Engineers
Boston, Massachusetts 02108
WHY ARE SEWER ORDINANCES NEEDED?
Sewer ordinances form the legal basis for the protection of the public Health as
affected by the sanitary collection and disposal of a community's wastewaters. Ordinances
are needed to protect the community's natural resources, to regulate the use of the sewerage
works and to prevent improper use of the sewerage works. Good ordinances set forth in an
available written form the rules and regulations needed to control the use of the sewerage
works. Such rules are needed in order to maximize the use of the sewerage works within the
limits of its capacity and to ensure that all users, both present and potential, are treated
equitably.
It is not often that it becomes necessary to resort to legal means to control the use of the
sewerage system, however, it is necessary to have clearly defined authority to do so when
such occasions arise.
Ordinances are also a means for educating the users of the sewerage system in regard to
the proper uses for the system. Adequate rules and regulations will tend to discourage the
development of improper uses of the sewerage system or uses which are beyond its
capabilities.
WHY ARE NEW ORDINANCES NEEDED?
Many cities and towns throughout the country are in the need of rewriting and
modernizing their existing ordinances or even of adopting ordinances. It may be asked
"Why are new ordinances needed at this time?" Modernized ordinances are needed because
many of the old ordinances were written primarily with the operation of the sewerage
collection system as the principle objective. At the time many of the older ordinances were
adopted, there was no wastewater treatment provided or the wastewater treatment was
limited to primary treatment. Many of the industries within a community discharged their
industrial wastewaters directly to the environment, generally without treatment. With the
universal requirement that all systems provide at least the equivalent of secondary
biological treatment and that no untreated wastes be discharged to the environment it has
now become necessary to regulate the discharges to the sewerage system to such materials as
can be adequately treated by the municipal treatment system.
New chemicals are being manufactured and used at an ever increasing rate. The effect
of many of these new materials on the sewage treatment processes and the environment are
not clearly understood. Stream standards and effluent standards have been upgraded such
that a municipality may become responsible for materials which pass through its
wastewater treatment system in excessive amounts. However, there are new treatment
methods available such as: physical chemical systems which permit a municipal treatment
works to adequately remove many pollutants which formerly would not have been
acceptable in the system.
Materials such as radioactive isotopes are now in wide use in many hospitals, so there is
the ever present possibility of an accidental spillage into the sewer system. The ordinance
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