Chatham To File Watershed Plan To Comply With State Regs

CHATHAM – The town has notified the state department of environment protection that it intends to seek a watershed permit for four watersheds in order to satisfy recent regulations that would otherwise require homeowners to install expensive nitrogen-reducing septic systems.

According to the pre-application notice, which was filed Dec. 6, the town will apply for watershed permits for southern embayments, including the Taylor’s Pond/Mill Creek, Sulfur Springs/Buck’s Creek, Cockle Cove Creek and Stage Harbor watersheds.

Filing the pre-application form gives the town time to prepare and file the final permit before the mandate that properties within nitrogen-sensitive watersheds install so-called innovative/alternative, or IA, septic systems goes into effect in five years.

“This really buys some time for the actual filing of the watershed permit,” said Director of Natural Resources Greg Berman. The town won’t take the entire five years to file the permit, he added.

A single permit will be sought for all four watersheds, which covers most of the southside of town. Portions of the north and east sides of town are already covered by the Pleasant Bay watershed permit, issued in 2018.

The Pleasant Bay permit, which also covers sections of Orleans, Brewster, Harwich and Chatham, will be a model for Chatham’s southern embayment permit. “We were lucky to have been involved in the Pleasant Bay watershed permit fairly early on,” Berman said. That permit will be a template for others, since it forged new ground as the first issued in the state.

Developing Chatham’s watershed permit won’t be as heavy a lift for Chatham as it will be for other towns, he said. Chatham’s wastewater management plan was approved by the state back in 2009, and construction of sewers began soon afterwards. Many of the watersheds that will be covered under the watershed permit have been sewered. Phase one A through E are complete, with the remaining areas in phase one scheduled to be finished by 2026. Sewers most recently were installed in the Meetinghouse Road area. Much of the Stage Harbor watershed, a priority for nitrogen reduction, was sewered in the initial phase. The second phase of the wastewater plan was originally scheduled to run from 2030 to 2040.

According to the notice filed Dec. 6, the watershed permit will be filed in July 2027.

“A lot of it is going to be documenting” what has already been done or is planned, Berman said, as well as developing monitoring to demonstrate that nitrogen levels are dropping. The town will be working with consultant GHD on the watershed permit. “They had done a lot of the background work already,” Berman noted.

Last year the state DEP implemented changes to its Title 5 septic regulations that designated 30 Cape watersheds as nitrogen sensitive areas. Watershed permits allow towns to develop plans to improve water quality through sewering or other wastewater treatment in order to avoid the requirement that individual homeowners replace existing septic systems with IA systems within five years. The systems are expensive and can run from $20,000 to $40,000, according to an information sheet issued by the town. Towns have two years to opt into the watershed permitting process.

“This is going to be a process,” Berman said. “There will be work involved, but it’s really a lot of what we were doing already.”