Budget Provision Threatens Ohio's Waters

The Nature Conservancy calls on lawmakers to enforce existing law protecting families and communities from untreated sewage

DUBLIN, OHIO — June 19, 2007 — Efforts to undermine Ohio’s on-site sewage treatment law threatens water quality for people and wildlife throughout the state, The Nature Conservancy said Tuesday.

“Ohio’s families and communities deserve clean, healthy water,” said Rich Shank, state director for The Nature Conservancy in Ohio, in a letter sent Tuesday to Gov. Ted Strickland and legislative leaders. “I’m writing to ask your support for a law that was designed to protect water resources throughout the state.”

A provision tucked into the state operating budget now before the Ohio General Assembly would eliminate the water quality protection measures called for in 2005, when lawmakers adopted a set of uniform statewide standards for siting, design, installation, operation, monitoring, maintenance and abandonment of septic tanks and other household sewage treatment systems (ORC 3718). The rules to implement this law took effect earlier this year.

Without this section of the Ohio Revised Code, Ohio will revert to 30-year old, outdated standards that are inadequate to safeguard our streams and lakes.

An Ohio State University survey estimates that 27 percent of Ohio’s more than 1 million septic systems malfunction, often dumping untreated human waste into local waterways, contaminating drinking water sources and harming wildlife at several levels along the food chain. Shank cited examples of some of the most spectacular known failures, including a tourism disaster in 2004, when more than 1,400 people at South Bass Island became ill from drinking water that was contaminated with fecal material.

“This law is vital to reducing stream pollution that flows from faulty septic systems and through our communities and countryside,” Shank said. “Faulty septic systems pose a significant threat to clean water for Ohio families and wildlife."

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.