A weekly reckoning with life in a warming world—and the fight to save it

Labor Day remains the last big summer vacation weekend in the United States. As we head into the long weekend, I’d like to point you to a great new piece from Keely Larson about a growing crisis in many of the waterfront communities vacationers frequent in the summer: aging septic systems.

Keely spoke to residents of Seeley Lake, Montana, which has been embroiled for years in a bitter battle over the town’s plumbing. There’s increasing evidence that the community’s septic systems are destroying the lake that local residents love and that the town depends on for tourism. The best solution, some say, is a new sewer system. But that’s easier said than done. “The extra cost to locals in taxes,” Keely wrote, “would be about $150 a month; in a town where the average salary is just over $40,000 a year, many cannot afford that. Plus, only 650 people—those drawn into the sewer district—would be responsible for the costs.”

This may sound rather pedestrian, but, as Keely points out, “Seeley Lake’s crisis is just one example of a national problem.” Towns in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, have also struggled with this issue, as have the Florida Keys. Aging septic systems don’t just contaminate local waters directly; they also create conditions for toxic algal blooms, which Emily Atkin and Ben Depp explored in more detail in The New Republic back in 2019.

“By and large,” Keely writes, “wastewater solutions are hard to implement because the problem is often invisible. It involves pipes and tanks underneath the surface that people want to think about maybe once and never again.”

There’s some good news here: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which passed last year, puts more money toward the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which loans money for municipal wastewater projects.

That can’t come fast enough for many towns. Keep that in mind if you find yourself at a cookout by the water this weekend. The tourist economy in many lakeside and seaside towns is fragile and doesn’t always provide an easy source of funds for municipal improvements. And without those improvements, Keely writes, a problem that starts out as a few outdated septic tanks “quickly becomes existential.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor

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—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor