What’s The Cost of NOT Cleaning Up East Falmouth Coastal Ponds?

 

It comes as no surprise that it will be expensive to reverse the rapid deterioration of water quality in Great, Green, and Bourne’s Ponds.  What may be shocking and new to many East Falmouth property owners, however, is what it may cost them if nothing is done to restore water quality in those ponds.  Indeed, the cost exposure is severe and extends to every citizen and property owner in Falmouth.

 

Water quality in the ponds has declined because development has greatly multiplied the amount of nitrogen being discharged into the ponds through groundwater. Nitrogen is a nutrient, and at low levels (< 0.3 ppm) sustains aquatic plants that form the base of healthy pond ecosystems. However, at the comparatively high levels observed in the ponds today (> 0.7 ppm), nitrogen stimulates the growth of algae that shade out native vegetation, which in turn destroys fish habitat and occasionally uses up so much oxygen that fish kills occur.

 

Septic waste and lawn fertilizers are the main culprits; together they account for more than 70% of the total nitrogen loads to the ponds.  This article will deal with septic waste only as lawn fertilizer is the subject of other actions and articles.

 

The Ashumet Plume Citizens Committee, established in 1998 to address the problem of nitrogen-overloading, has concluded from scientific studies that nitrogen inputs to the ponds will have to be significantly reduced to restore reasonably-acceptable levels of water quality in the ponds. Achieving reductions of this magnitude requires that the majority of the nitrogen loading from home septic systems and lawns be eliminated.  The only reliable way to remove that much nitrogen from home septic systems is to replace them with some form of centralized, professionally-managed treatment, such as sewers and a wastewater treatment plant in the most densely populated part of the watersheds.  These facilities should then be complemented by cluster or on-site denitrifying systems in the less populated areas or Title V systems near the shoreline. 

 

Engineering studies have shown that  some central wastewater treatment can cost up to $20,000 per average home connected, and there will be more than 7500 homes in the watersheds of Great, Green and Bournes Ponds at build-out.   However, initial calculations indicate that using a  combination of a waste treatment plant plus some denitrifying systems or Title V in the less densely populated areas can bring the costs down considerably.  Committee  members are working hard to develop a feasible plan that would only cost  $600-700 per year per average home over the next  20 or so years, and a fair and equitable way to pay for it.

 

Still, meaningful improvements in water quality will not be cheap and it seems reasonable to ask what it will cost if existing practices continue unchanged and water quality continues to degrade as more homes are built.  The answer to that question also may surprise many people.  Treating home waste is not cost-free, of course, even if the treatment site is in your own back yard.  Then there is the impact on property values that polluted ponds  will cause.  As property values suffer, so too does tax revenue.  However typical expenses stay the same so  everyone’s taxes will have to increase to keep the Town functioning at current levels. 

 

First, home waste treatment.  Today’s Title V systems do a fine job of removing most threats to human health, but they are not designed to remove the nitrogen threat to the health of our coastal ponds.  The watersheds of the three ponds now contain 6300 homes, and development through build-out will add another 1200 homes. New homes require Title V systems, each costing an average of roughly $10,000 per house.  Further, about half of the existing homes use cesspools that will have to be replaced with Title V systems when they fail or ownership transfers.  Finally, a great many existing Title V systems will have to be replaced in the next  20 or so years (their design life is twenty years). So, over that period, simply complying with present Title V regulations will cost property owners in the three-pond watersheds  around $75 million, and that expenditure will not remove the nitrogen that is destroying the ponds so the threat to real estate values will continue.

 

That money could, instead, be used to  begin implementing a program  to manage wastewater treatment and restore water quality to the ponds by minimizing nitrogen input.

 

Choosing not to reduce nitrogen loads and allowing water quality to become badly degraded  will also depress the value of property that now enjoys premium prices thanks to being located beside or in view of the water.  One way to identify that risk is to consider how the Tax Assessor develops tax valuations for such properties.  For uniformity throughout the town, the technique used is to multiply the value of land by a multiplication factor to reflect water influences; those factors can double or triple the base land value.  With the town’s computerized system, it is possible to compute the total value of those water factors.   Remarkably, water factors generate more than 40% of the assessed value of all  residential homes in Falmouth, and  residential homes account for more than 75% of the town’s total tax base.

 

If we allow our ponds to degrade, the water premium in today’s property values  will decline sharply; if the pollution gets bad enough, they could  become swamp like and turn into a water penalty.  Living next to a healthy pond full of fish and clear water is worth a lot; living next to a smelly pond overgrown with algae is not.  Some examples of this problem already exist in Falmouth.  When the premium on water factors declines or vanishes, so too will large amounts of real estate value.

 

The pain from vanishing real estate value would not be limited to owners of water-front and water-view property, however.  More than 30% of Falmouth’s revenues from real estate taxes are generated by water factors for  residential homes. If coastal waters cease to be attractive, those revenues are still needed and Falmouth taxpayers – wherever they live – will have to make up the loss through higher tax rates for everyone, or face an impossible squeeze between shrinking town budgets and rising populations to be served.

 

Ultimately, there is the risk that declining water quality could, in the long-term, undermine the whole economy of the Town. Falmouth depends heavily upon summer tourists who come, in large part, because of the beauty of the water. Without that beauty, tourists could stop coming, and take their revenue elsewhere.  In addition, potential year-round residents would look at other towns.

 

Of course, it is difficult to know if, and when, water quality would become so bad that it turns tourists and new residents away or destroys the value of waterfront property and our quality of life. But these are real risks.  People living around Perch Pond know how unpleasant a degraded pond can become. Perch Pond has deteriorated more quickly than the rest of the nearby ponds because it is very deep and the polluted water tends to stay around for long periods of time, festering, before it flushes out into Great Pond. In the summer, Perch Pond sometimes smells awful and is overgrown with algae --- an unpleasant example of where other ponds might be heading, and the costs the Town might suffer if it fails to sharply reduce nitrogen loads.