Dorchester County, being a vastly rural area, has some of Maryland’s most unique features. But along with them, come some unique problems.
Out in the country, developers of home sites decades ago had a challenge: How to get rid of wastewater from houses in areas with no sewers and where septic tanks alone wouldn’t work.
What they created are known as berm infiltration ponds. BIP ponds, as they are called. Large, open-air pools to dispose of bathroom and household wastewater through natural decomposition and evaporation.
Today, many of these ponds are failing.
Now, they threaten to add many thousands of dollars in costs to home owners and the county at a time when its budget is already stretched to the margins.
In reports over the last few years, home owners and eventually, the Maryland Department of the Environment, chronicled how these ponds were filling up, close to overflowing the berms.
Cliff Rossi and his wife, Linda, bought a home near McKiel Point 13 years ago that relied, along with 11 neighbors, on septic systems that all fed into a single berm infiltration pond.
All was fine – until an inspector for a neighbor who was planning to sell their home discovered trees growing out of distribution pipes at the BIP pond.
The home owners called the county, and Rossi said, among the respondents was County Commissioner Lenny Pfeffer.
"And the county - to their credit - came out," Rossi said. "Lenny PLfeffer, who wasn't even our councilman, came out along with the county manager, and they said, ' Houston, we have a problem here.'"
Plfeffer, now president of the County Council, said he was surprised at what they found.
"That was my first exposure to a BIP pond in the county, and I saw it was getting very close to the top! So we reached out to MDE (Maryland Department of the Environment) and the USDA, and we all kind of got together and brainstormed what we could do."
It turned out that the Rossi’s BIP pond was just one of 47 in Dorchester, and was among the 60 percent that MDE determined are failing or in an imminent risk of failure.
The problems officials cite include water rising to the brim and sometimes overflowing. Years of low or no maintenance, missing life-saving equipment the ponds are supposed to be equipped with. And trees and vegetation overgrowing the pond sites.
"A lot of them were well overgrown with trees, and the problem with that is the trees block out the sun and the wind, which is what helps normal evaporation," Pfeffer said.
Complicating the situation, most of the home owners who relied on BIP ponds thought the payments they had been making to the Dorchester County Sanitary District meant that somebody was taking care of the ponds all those years.
Not so, Pfeffer said.
"They actually had an indenture on their deed that said with regard to the BIP pond that they were responsible for the maintenance themselves."
"And actually after we did so much research on this, there was confusion. People thought all along they were paying $250 a year to the Sanitary District for what they thought was a maintenance fee. But it was actually an administrative fee."
Cliff Rossi was one of those
"We did our due diligence. We called up the Sanitary District and I talked to the person. I said, ' What's this administrative fee for?' and she said, 'That's to cover the cost of maintaining the (ponds). I thought, Okay, there we go. I'm good."
Nevertheless, Rossi credits the county for stepping in and fixing the problem with his neighborhood BIP pond.
The fix was expensive, and took several years.
The Maryland Department of the Environment advised that the ponds should be drained down to safe levels and the wastewater hauled away by sewage service trucks. The cost ran into thousands of dollars.
"And I can't remember how many truckloads were done that summer, it was at least 20 if not more," Rossi said. "And it was a cost that was borne by the 12 homeowners on that pond."
"But the good news story is the county officials did help us get connected to the sewer."
But the Rossis and their neighbors were lucky. Only seven of the 47 BIP ponds in the county were close enough to a sewer main to connect. They no longer rely on their BIP pond.
Houses that do rely on the wastewater ponds, MDE says, should be connected to sewer lines in places where such connections are possible. And where it isn’t, residents have to pay to have their septic pumped out regularly.
MDE advised Dorchester officials to cease approval of any more berm infiltration ponds, and they have.
Now, the county is watching the status of the remaining ponds. Pfeffer said the county is still working with state and federal sources for further answers. In the meantime, those BIP ponds that are working will continue, Pfeffer said.
"So far we haven't had to do any emergency pumping on any of the others yet."
But the MDE report five years ago also noted one other concern. Officials said storms and tidal events may overtake the ponds, mix with wastewater, and flow over surrounding land.
That’s still on Rossi’s mind.
"If we were to get a major storm that came in from the north facing into Madison Bay, and that pond were to overflow or the berm were to be breached, there'd be a pretty significant environmental catastrophe. So, I think we're kind of whistling past the graveyard, trying to say, well, they've been there for 25 years, and the ponds will continue to be okay.
"Until they aren't."