RV Park in New Mexico

I had a conversation with the Ground Water Division of New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) a few years ago regarding a client's desire to build an RV park on his property.  NMED informed me that they would not approve anything but a non-discharging system (Evaporating Sewage Pond) because in their experience, most of the wastewater systems installed in New Mexico at RV parks were in a perpetual state of failure. 

The photo below is from an Eliminite system, permitted under Liquid Waste Division, installed at an RV park in New Mexico two years ago.  At the time the photo was taken, all 20 spaces in the RV park were occupied and had been for several months. Notice how clean the MetaRocks media is...It has never been hosed off, taken out, fluffed or changed.  There was no odor. 

The system is sampled quarterly and, at the time of the most recent sample, the park was full. The Permit Limit for BOD is 150 mg/L.  There is no specified standard for nitrogen.

The sample results were: 
BOD  18.9 mg/L
TN (ammonia, organic nitrogen, nitrate and nitrite) 13.7 mg/L

Clearly, the system is not only capable of treating RV park wastewater, it is capable of doing it better than most systems do with a single family residence.  In fact, take a look, for instance, at Maryland's Best Available Technology data and you will see that this very compact Eliminite system treating RV wastewater blows the"Best Available Technology", according to the state of Maryland, away.

I had the opportunity to visit a few advanced treatment system installations in New Mexico last week and I must say that I was shocked at what I saw.  It seems the onsite industry is the only industry where manufacturers, engineers and installers are allowed to charge, and receive,  huge sums of money for systems that do not work.  If automobile purchases we conducted similarly, a person would pay for the car and and not even be able to drive it home before it broke down.  They would have no recourse because the manufacturer would cite some study where a "test car" was shown to work adequately.  How do you say NSF?

I saw installations that were so bad...so ugly that I cannot believe the manufacturer is still in business. I thought NSF had some kind of annual certification process....I would like to give them a few addresses. 

One installer in the Albuquerque area is so incompetent and cheap that he will not order effluent pumps with a cord long enough to allow proper placement of the control panel.  He installs the customers control panel about 4 inches above the ground.   This means that in order to service, adjust, or even open the damn panel, the service provider has to lay on the ground on his belly.   Apparently, NMED finds this acceptable and continues to permit and approve this garbage work. I have a photo, want to laugh?

I visited an RV park that had seven air bubbler systems installed for wastewater treatment.  The stench was overwhelming and the system has been in a constant state of violation.  The interesting thing about this is that the Technical Advisory Committee(TAC) in New Mexico recently upgraded the status of the manufacturer by recommending they be approved for the tertiary treatment standard.  I saw several of these bubbler systems installed at residences and they too, filled the air with their feculent stench. 

I visited one system that must have been an engineers wet dream...It was a wetland system of sorts but it was easy to tell, and this was confirmed, that the engineer keeps cobbling additional components on in a vain attempt to get the thing to work.  It was actually kind of hideous and the only real visual blight in an otherwise beautiful setting.  I hear it really annoys the neighbors with its alarm and odor.

I recently received a set of sample results for a number of Eliminite systems in New Mexico.  The total nitrogen average was 5.8 mg/L.  A set of nitrogen samples from Montana from several systems had a TN average of 8.05 mg/L.  These are new results and I have not previously reported them.