about the dirty, soapy water left over from household use. It could be
drained to the yard or into a stream. (Now we know that the soaps and
other products in that water can cause significant damage to a creek and the wildlife in it.)
But human waste has always been a concern –
it has an offensive
odor and it is full of germs.
By our standards, older systems for dealing with
human waste are extremely
unacceptable.
In many cities, sewage was dumped out into
the streets. It
ran down through the gutters
to the nearest creek or river.
Outhouses
In Oxford, the earliest settlers would, most likely,
have dug a well or
found a spring for their drinking
water. For their bathroom, they would
have built
an outhouse. An outhouse is a little building with a seat
with a hole in it. Under the seat there’s a deep hole in the ground – no
water, no flush, just a hole.
Septic Systems
Flush toilets were invented in the 1500’s but didn’t
become common until much more recently. (In rural areas the
outhouse was still
fairly common 50 years ago.)
Flush toilets need someplace to flush to. For a single house, the solution is to add a septic system. Pipes carry waste from toilets and sinks to a big tank in the ground. Everything solid stays in the tank. Water drains off into a system of pipes buried in the ground – a septic drainage field.
Community wastewater systems
In towns and cities, the toilets and sinks are hooked to a network of
pipes buried in the ground under the city. Historically, the pipes carried
the wastewater to a creek or river and dumped it.
When people began to
recognize how that
damaged
the rivers, and as downstream neighbors
began
to complain, communities added treatment
plants to their systems. The
plants would clean the
water up before releasing it to the creek.
This is what we still do. But through the years our
standard of 'clean'
has gotten stricter and stricter.
Time for a change
As the population has grown, the amount of
wastewater we produce has increased. So have
the 'non-point'
sources of pollution - the
pollutants that runoff into the creek whenever it rains.
These 'non-point' sources include agricultural fertilizers, chemical sprays, and animal waste. They also include residential garden sprays and fertilizers, automotive oil, antifreeze, and trash that washes off of our yards, roads and parking lots.
In recent years we have seen the water quality in our rivers and even in the ocean deteriorate. Now, we see that the quality and quantity of fish and other seafood populations are affected by the wastewater and other pollutants we are putting into the river system. To try to stop this trend, our government has tightened regulations on wastewater treatment plants, as well as on stormwater and non-point sources of pollution.
