Wastewater System Alternatives Case Studies

Issues Addressed:
Housing Options Infrastructure Sustainable Housing

Blodgett Landing, Newbury, NH

Blodgett Landing is on the shores of Lake Sunapee in Newbury, New Hampshire.  It is a census-designated community with a population of 152 in 2020. It has many older camps, which have gradually been converted to year-round use.  By 2009, the community’s fifty-year-old wastewater treatment facility had begun to fail, and the Town of Newbury voted to construct a large enviro-septic system to replace it. The new system was completed in 2011 and serves 145 separate connections; it has a maximum design capacity of 50,000 gallons per day (gpd). Note that the designs and specifications of wastewater system alternatives outside of New Hampshire may not meet NH DES standards. While the exact systems below may not be allowed, they are directionally in line with what is possible beyond conventional sewer or septic.
Installation of the municipally owned Blodgett Landing community septic system in Newbury. (Images via NextGen Septics)

Note on DES Standards

Note that the designs and specifications of wastewater system alternatives outside of New Hampshire may not meet NH DES standards. While the exact systems below may not be allowed, they are directionally in line with what is possible beyond conventional sewer or septic.

Brownville, ME

Brownville, ME The Town of Brownville is in northern Maine near Moosehead Lake and Baxter State Park. In 1985, the Town voted to construct a subsurface wastewater treatment facility to help clean up the Pleasant River. The system serves the villages of Brownsville and Brownsville Junction; it consists of three miles of gravity sewer lines that lead to infiltration beds. A separate, septage disposal facility is adjacent to the treatment area. The maximum design capacity of the system is 330,000 gpd and it serves approximately 870 residents. This system’s exact specifications may not meet NH DES requirements.

Noquochoke Village, Westport, MA

The affordable housing crisis is perhaps most acute in New England along the coast of Massachusetts, with very high land costs, and mostly large homes on large lots. One project helping to address this problem in Westport, Massachusetts is the newly constructed Noquochoke Village on a river of the same name. The project consists of 50 apartments varying in size, that were sited on the front 8 acres of the property. The remaining 23 acres abutting the river has been preserved as open space. The project is served by a community septic system with a maximum capacity of 9,900 gpd. Testing has shown that effluent quality exceeds the stringent standards set by the Westport Planning Board for the project. This system’s exact specifications may not meet NH DES requirements.
Noquochoke Village, an Affordable Housing development enabled by community septic in Westport, MA. (Images via CEDAC (top) and Noquochoke Village (bottom)).

Brewster Landing, Brewster, MA

Brewster Landing is a mixed-income cottage development on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The project consists of 28 homes on nine acres. Each home has two- to three-bedrooms and ranges from 1,350 to 1,600 square feet. Most homes are single-family residences, and some are duplexes. Homes are sited close together and arranged around a shared green. This amenity open space doubles as the leech field for a community septic system that includes I/A pretreatment. This combined approach to wastewater enables relatively dense development far from public sewer. This system’s exact specifications may not meet NH DES requirements.
An Affordable Housing development in Brewster, MA, was enabled by I/A tech and community septic. (Images via Coastal Engineering.)

Resources

Related Tools

A drawing showing an aerial view of same plot of land three times. Above there is a version labeled "Undeveloped," with a wooded area and a lake and stream. At bottom-left there is a version labeled "Conventional Subdivision." It shows the land divided into a ten parcels of relatively even size spread out across the area. There is a large amount of road and driveway area and many of the trees have been removed. At bottom-right is a version labeled "Cluster Housing." It shows twelve relatively small homes on twelve small parcels, clustered in two groups at the bottom-left of the area. The trees have been preserved, and only a small amount of road/driveway area connects the homes to the main edge of the area. Green trails wind throughout the parcel and connect to both the houses and the public road away from the houses. The Cluster Housing diagram has additional labels: "Preserved Natural Features," "Less Infrastructure," "Bonus units," and "Public access."
Cluster Housing
A diagram of a parcel of land. On the top is a mix of one- to three-story buildings, many with an apparent mix of uses, sitting along the intersection of two roads. This is labeled "Mix of uses using traditional village design." Lines at the edges of this area point draw down, showing this area is at the center of a larger area shown in dark green and apparently undeveloped. It is labeled "80% of rural and conserved in VPA."
Village Plan Alternative (VPA)
An axonometric diagram of two buildings next to each other. One building is four stories with two entrances. On the bottom story there is a sign for "nh hardware." The second building is two stories with three entrances (including a corner entrance), awnings, and cafe tables). The drawing is labeled "Retail, restaurant, and other active uses on ground floor" and "Housing on upper levels."
Mixed-Use Development
A diagram showing the front facades of housing types and given labels: small single-family, townhomes (attached single-family), cottage court (grouped small single-family), duplex, stacked duplex, triplex, stacked triplex, four-plex, six-pack, courtyard apartments.
Missing Middle Housing Types