Suburban septic tanks threatened to reverse a century of urban sewer reform

Evidence

For sanitarians, indeed, the spread of septic tanks brought a nightmarish sense of déjà vu. The profession had grown to maturity fighting against private disposal of household wastes. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, the nation’s cities had no sewers: People threw slop into the streets or buried waste in backyard pits. For decades, city engineers and doctors had struggled to persuade citizens to build public sewer systems, to prevent both disruptive nuisances and deadly outbreaks of disease, and the campaign had succeeded. Now the reliance on septic tanks in fast-growing suburbs seemed to threaten a dangerous turning back of the clock – “the recrudescence,” in the words of two authorities, “of an old and presumably solved problem.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 389

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘recrudescence of an old and presumably solved problem’ framing resonates with how infrastructure progress narratives get re-opened, relevant to the polyad’s institutions thread. — connects to: Suburban pollution protests produced the major federal water laws of 1965-74. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 423; Septic tanks only work at low rural densities and fail in dense suburbs — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 388; Suburban septic-tank threats converted water pollution from local into national policy. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 421 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Groundwater pollution fears nationalized septic-tank regulation after 1960 #expands (0.90) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 406
• Suburban septic-tank threats converted water pollution from local into national policy. #expands (0.85) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 421
• Sanitary engineers launched the campaign to regulate urban septic tanks #complicates (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 388
• Septic-tank failures symbolized suburban baseness in 1950s cultural criticism #complicates (0.72) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 395