Established in 1989, the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation faces a daunting task: to restore and preserve the water quality and habitat in the vast, 10,000-square-mile watershed surrounding Lake Pontchartrain, a shallow and brackish 629-square-mile inland bay that sits just north of New Orleans and drains into the Gulf of Mexico.

The nonprofit foundation has identified several rivers that empty into the north end of the lake – where residential development has boomed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina – as key sources of pollution. In particular, results from water-quality tests conducted in Tangipahoa Parish revealed extremely high counts of fecal coliform bacteria in the Yellow Water River and Ponchatoula Creek.

The primary cause? Wastewater from many commercial and individual home sources, including residents who’ve been turning off pumps in their aeration waste treatment systems, which are commonly used in the region, says Andrea Bourgeois-Calvin, the foundation’s water-quality program director.

A comprehensive educational effort, funded by a state grant, is yielding positive results. But the group has a long way to go to achieve its goal of making local waterways that drain into the Lake Pontchartrain estuary safe for swimming and other recreational activities. What the foundation has learned from its educational efforts can benefit pumpers around the country who are interested in boosting their role as environmental stewards of their local waterways.

Pumper: How bad was the water quality in the Yellow Water River?

Bourgeois-Calvin: When we first started testing the Yellow Water River in 2006, we commonly found levels that exceeded 10,000 fecal coliform colonies per 100 milliliters of water. That’s considered not even safe for boating, much less swimming. Our goal is to reach a consistent level of 2,000 colonies or less per 100 milliliters of water in a one-year period.

Pumper: How many homes are there in the two worst watersheds and what kind of waste treatment systems are used there?

Bourgeois-Calvin: There are 756 homes in the Yellow Water River watershed and 965 homes in the Ponchatoula Creek watershed. Aeration systems [pumping air into the waste tank to encourage the growth of bacteria, which subsequently break down the solid waste] are more common than traditional septic systems. After the waste is treated, the system discharges effluent into local ditches and streams.

Because we’re in the Mississippi River delta region, the soil here has a lot of clay, so there’s not enough soil percolation for traditional septic systems to work effectively. So people with older [conventional] septic systems have discharge pipes installed. Essentially, they discharge raw wastewater into ditches and streams. These types of failed systems will have to be replaced.

Pumper: How did you discover the aeration systems weren’t working and why weren’t they functioning?

Bourgeois-Calvin: We realized we needed to target residential homes to find out why the fecal coliform counts were so high. So we obtained a state grant that funded a systematic, door-to-door inspection and educational program. We started the inspections in January 2013

Through June, we inspected 152 homes in Tangipahoa Parish, of which 95 rely on aeration systems. Of those, 59 – or 62 percent – failed an inspection. Of those failed systems, 40 – or 68 percent – weren’t working because the aerators were either not plugged in or not functioning. Biggest issue we see is people unplugging them because they’ve been told they’re expensive to run.

Another common issue is that ants build colonies in the aerators, which causes them to malfunction. In winter, ants build colonies in them because they offer a warm environment. So the systems need to be repaired or replaced.

Pumper: How can you convince residents to run the aerators?

Bourgeois-Calvin: To combat that mentality, we figured out how much it actually costs per month to run an aerator pump, which is $3.70 cents. That’s comparable to what people pay to light a 75-watt lightbulb for typical home use in a month.

This information is contained in a brochure that also explains other ways people can avoid problems with their system, like checking if it’s working after a bad storm, being careful about what they put down their drains and having their tank pumped every three years. We’ve found it’s best to keep the messages simple.

Most times, consumers are told to just plug in their system and it’ll work fine. But they’re more like a car; you need to do certain things to maintain them. And running them correctly is more cost-effective.

Pumper: What role can septic system pumpers and installers play in keeping waterways clean?

Bourgeois-Calvin: We’re trying to engage designers and installers now and tell them that the kind of systems they’ve been installing for years may not work any more. We’ve already had meetings with designers and installers to talk about systems that might meet the more stringent [water-quality] goals we have.

They can also better educate homeowners on the front end … leave them with a simple, easy-to-read document. The brochure we put together is simple and gets the point across.

Pumper: Are your efforts yielding results?

Bourgeois-Calvin: Yes. Since we started, we’ve had to send only three cases to parish authorities because residents haven’t fixed issues. Over and over, we’ve found that the problems usually stem from a lack of education, whether it’s a commercial or residential system. Education goes a long way toward helping people avoid fines and other legal actions, as well as improve water quality.

We’re getting closer to our goals. Some sites in the upper Yellow Water River watershed are meeting the 2,000-count level in 75 percent of the samples taken within a year; we sample about 20 to 25 times a year. And from 2006 to 2012, 65 percent of the worst Yellow Water River sample sites met that goal, compared to 45 percent in 2006.

We’ve performed the same program in other watersheds and significantly reduced fecal-coliform counts. The area we’re currently inspecting [the Yellow Water River and Ponchatoula Creek watersheds] is very small compared to the entire 10,000-square-mile Pontchartrain watershed, but it’s an area that needs particular attention.

One big problem is there’s a disconnect between the upper half of the watersheds, where the rivers are smaller and people view them more as ditches or some form of stormwater conveyance, and the lower half, where the rivers get larger and people use them recreationally for boating and fishing. Residents farther north are more isolated, so they don’t always realize that what they do affects the wetlands to the south, where people boat and fish. But we feel momentum is building … we’re seeing more and more participation.

Pumper: Where do you go from here?

Bourgeois-Calvin: We’re averaging 50 inspections a month in the Yellow Water River and Ponchatoula Creek watersheds; by the end of 2015, we hope to have inspections of all home systems completed in those two areas.