What is Sewer Service Area Planning?

Sewer Service Area Planning is a process designed to anticipate a community's future needs for wastewater treatment. This planning helps protect communities from adverse water quality impacts through development of cost-effective and environmentally sound 20-year sewerage system growth plans. A sewer service area plan identifies existing sewered areas as well as adjacent land most suitable for new development. This planning also identifies areas where sewers should not go: environmentally sensitive areas where development would have an adverse impact upon water quality.

Sewer service area planning plays an important role in keeping Wisconsin's water safe for drinking, recreation and diverse aquatic life. Sewer service area planning is not designed to restrict a community's growth, obligate wastewater treatment plants to provide sewer throughout the planning boundary, or affect community annexation policy. The plans are designed to provide structure to a community's wastewater collection system to accommodate current and future growth while at the same time consolidating wetland, shoreland and floodplain protection programs within a community-based plan for sewered development.

SSA Plans are Community Plans

Communities that develop sewer service area plans have a logical structure for their wastewater treatment. The sewer service area planning process is the first step for many communities in developing a 'nested' management scheme: the SSA Plan reflects the goals and objectives of regional, comprehensive or master plans and facilities plans and subsequent plans and specifications for sewer lines provide the detailed engineering for the community's wastewater needs. Together, these plans support the state's Areawide Water Quality Management Program, of which Sewer Service Area planning is one component.

Sewer service area plans are developed for individual communities and for multiple communities served jointly by one wastewater treatment plant. The plans use 20-year population projections, local density standards and an inventory of areas identified as environmentally sensitive for projecting and evaluating wastewater treatment and collection system needs for 20 years into the future. Participating communities are thus planning for future growth versus reacting to unanticipated demands.

Sewer service area plans incorporate and support local land use plans, employment trends and development trends. Land needs commercial/industrial uses and residential uses and projected and accounted for in the process. Property owners and local governments within the sewer service area benefit from environmentally safe, low-maintenance, and cost-effective wastewater treatment. Community sanitary districts benefit by identifying the wastewater system improvements necessary to meet future growth projections.

For more information, contact: Lisa Helmuth.