Alternative Collection System

There’s great news for rural Texas communities needing to develop wastewater management infrastructure. Today, rural Texans have more options than ever before to manage wastewater.

These options offer:

• Protection for the environment

• Flexibility for communities to plan for future economic growth

• Lower installation costs than traditional centralized wastewater management systems.

Wastewater in rural areas is usually treated by an onsite wastewater treatment system—often septic systems—at each home. These work well in areas where the population is low and the environment can accommodate the amount of waste produced.

But if the population grows or if the land cannot handle the wastewater, the community as a whole must take steps to address its wastewater problems. Before, communities whose septic systems were failing had only one choice in managing wastewater adequately: to install an extensive pipe network to collect wastewater to a centralized, highly maintained wastewater treatment plant.

Now rural communities have a new option: They can use a combination of conventional septic systems, advanced onsite systems, and cluster systems to manage wastewater.