Contamination of estuaries from failing septic tank systems: difficulties in scaling up from monitored individual systems to cumulative impact

Abstract

Aquaculture in many coastal estuaries is threatened by diffuse sources of runoff from different land use activities. The poor performance of septic tank systems (STS), as well as runoff from agriculture, may contribute to the movement of contaminants through ground and surface waters to estuaries resulting in oyster contamination, and following their consumption, impacts to human health. In monitoring individual STS in sensitive locations, it is possible to show that nutrients and faecal contaminants are transported through the subsurface in sandy soils off-site with little attenuation. At the catchment scale however, there are always difficulties in discerning direct linkages between failing STS and water contamination due to processes such as effluent dilution, adsorption, precipitation and vegetative uptake. There is often substantial complexity in detecting and tracing effluent pathways from diffuse sources to water bodies in field studies. While source tracking as well as monitoring using tracers may assist in identifying potential pathways from STS to surface waters and estuaries, there are difficulties in scaling up from monitored individual systems to identify their contribution to the cumulative impact which may be apparent at the catchment scale. The processes which may be obvious through monitoring and dominate at the individual scale may be masked and not readily discernible at the catchment scale due to impacts from other land use activities.