THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605110025
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Warning! Sewers are a communist plot. I know, you thought communism was dead everywhere except Cuba, but out in Virginia Beach some residents continue to worry about the enemy within - or perhaps below.
I live in a densely populated subdivision that is nevertheless still waiting for the arrival of that fundamental 20th-century amenity - sewer service. Instead, each homesteader in my neighborhood is the proud owner of his own septic system.
Personally, I am not really enthusiastic about anything with the word septic in the title. At night I have troubled dreams in which my home sinks slowly, like the House of Usher, into the cess that lies pooled all around it. Needless to say, I am enthusiastic about city plans to finally get around to our area with the sewers.
But not all my neighbors share my attitude. Recently, a long memo appeared in my mailbox detailing the horrors of the proposed sewer service. The memo admits that some homes in the area are candidates for sewer service since they are in danger of seeping pollution into a nearby bay.
However, the memo argues that most neighborhood properties possess soil that is suited to septic systems which ``should function with proper maintenance indefinitely.'' To me, this phrase raises two immediate red flags. I wouldn't know proper maintenance from willful neglect when it comes to sepsis, and how long is indefinitely anyway? It seems kind of indefinite to me.
The bulk of this memo is devoted to elaborate calculations demonstrating that a cost of $13.20 per linear foot of street frontage must be added to a $30 per linear foot sewer-tap expense, a sewer-cleanout fee, ongoing utility bills, taxes, sinking funds, double drain fields et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as the King of Siam was fond of saying. It will all allegedly add up to a bill rivaling the national debt.
On the other hand, installing sewers will get me out from under - or out from over - all that seeping sepsis and put the ball firmly in the city's court on the question of proper maintenance - in perpetuity.
But the sewer opponents aren't through with me yet. A call comes in seeking our signature on a petition meant to keep the sewer-mongers at bay indefinitely. My wife takes the call and in her own delicate fashion tells the petitioners they must be nuts.
She argues that the lack of proper sewers lowers the value of our property if we ever want to sell. Not everyone, she suggests, is so avid to retain sewerage on their own property as the sewer foes. Indeed, a house connected to a modern waste-disposal line is likely to seem more valuable to many home buyers than one marooned on an island of its own night soil, she proposes.
Right now you are probably asking yourself, whatever happened to those communists you promised in the first paragraph? Fear not, their time has come. The anti-sewer crusader on the line senses we don't buy the economic argument against sewers and so changes tack. We owe it to ourselves to oppose the invasion of sewers on political, nay, patriotic grounds.
Sewers are just one more encroachment by big government on our lives, the caller suggests. If we let them have our excrement today, what will they come after tomorrow? Oh sure, it seems like a bargain to let them pipe away our vile effluvia for a few dollars a month, but once we come to depend on them to evacuate our ordure, we may lose the self-reliance that made this nation great.
We consider telling the caller that dealing with dung is a job we are only too willing to let government handle; indeed, the kind of job for which government is eminently suited. But there seems no point in further discussion. We have crossed from the territory of Dr. Milton Friedman to that of Dr. --- Strangelove. It's only a matter of time until we'll be hearing about precious bodily fluids and the dangers of fluoridation. Gently, we cradle the phone and wait impatiently for the backhoes to arrive. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB