Achieving Results

Sending Notices and Tracking Results

Click here for a flow chart that contains a sample sequence of events for sending inspection notices to property owners. Click on the links below to download sample notices that you can adopt for your community as well as suggested educational enclosures.

Sample Letters:
• First Maintenance Notice
• Reminder
• Second Reminder
• Routine Maintenance Notice
• Pump-out Notice
• Notice of Violation

Factsheets:
• First Maintenance
• Pump-out
• Routine Maintenance
• Tank Upgrades
• Extend the Life

For communities with a mandatory inspection and maintenance program, it is important not only to implement the program by sending notices, but also to analyze the collected inspection data, enforce the regulations, and report the results. Often a community will get caught up in collecting data and lose sight of the overall goal, which is to analyze and report the status of onsite systems in the community in order to protect water quality.

Analyzing Data:

As communities analyze the results, they will begin to notice trends in the data. It is important for wastewater management programs to evolve as inspection results are gathered and analyzed. For example, in after two months of inspections in Jamestown, the Town noticed that 30% of the systems reported use of garbage disposals, and that many of these system were not being maintained as frequently as they should have been. The Town responded by creating a fact sheet educating homeowners about the dangers of garbage grinders, and the Town applied for grant money to help homeowners upgrade their systems with access risers and effluent filters.

Enforcing Regulations:

Towns are often diligent about sending initial inspection notices, but find it difficult to follow up when residents don’t comply with the initial notice. Town will typically experience around 70% compliance with the initial inspection notices, but it is important to follow-up with reminder notices to the other 30%. Firstly, most residents fully intend to comply with the town’s regulations but may be a tad forgetful. Secondly, if the town accepts the 70% compliance and doesn’t follow-up with the remaining property owners, word will quickly spread that the town doesn’t enforce the regulations and initial compliance will drop below 70%.

Reporting Results:

When data is analyzed and trends are noticed it becomes very important to make the results available to the public. We recommend producing quarterly reports to the Town Council and advertising the results on a Town web site. Here is Jamestown's results page for example. This keeps the residents informed as to the current status of onsite systems in their neighborhood and lets them know that the Town is serious about wastewater management.

It is also a good idea to talk with the editor of the local newspaper about publishing articles on the progress the Town is making with their wastewater management program. For example, Block Island has a great relationship with the local paper; the stories and maps published in the newspaper educated property owners, increased awareness, and were partly responsible for the increases in compliance over the years.

Here is an example of how reporting results in the newspaper is an effective method of increasing overall compliance.