Intergovernmental responsibilities for water supply and sewage disposal in metropolitan areas. Page: 40
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larger metropolitan areas and in those with more than one watershed
or drainage basin, it is quite possible that submetropolitan development
will offer comparable or greater economies of scale, as well as
being politically more feasible, than areawide approaches.
A consideration of the economies of scale must not lose sight
of the fact that the overall economic advantages of comprehensive
development of utilities does not provide economic advantages for
each component of the metropolitan area. Some municipalities because
of past investment, location, or pattern of development, can handle
their own water supply or waste disposal problem at a lower cost on
an individual community or small interlocal basis. Others, particularly
those with adequate facilities in being, will resist comprehensive
schemes because the costs outweigh benefits, particularly on a shortrun
basis. If a community which has met its past capital needs is
located in a metropolitan area where the gross backlog of investment
in water and sewage facilities is considerable, the advantages of
comprehensive development are likely to seem meager indeed. Furthermore,
the tendency to build comprehensive systems with capacity
sufficient to accommodate future growth, while an extremely wise
long-range investment decision in terms of overall regional development,
is likely to decrease the economic attractiveness of such
development to those communities with adequate facilities in being.
For these reasons, comprehensive approaches to water and waste
disposal problems cannot be justified on an economic basis alone.
Considerations of public health, other water uses, planning, and
guiding sound development must be brought into the picture.
Another economic factor favoring comprehensive development
is the protection against unwise investment offered by regional
approaches. Small facilities, particularly for sewage disposal
and treatment, are excessively expensive to operate, obsolesce
rapidly, and rarely provide the long-range solution that a comprehensive
program can insure. Suburbs jealous of their autonomy often
have preferred uneconomic individual community facilities to membership
in a larger system. However, postwar experience in the Seattle and
Denver metropolitan areas illustrates that in many instances community
plants will eventually be abandoned. For the suburbanite who began
with an individual treatment system, this poses the possibility of
a triple investment: first, a septic tank; second, a community
treatment facility; and, third, a regional sewage disposal and
treatment system. James R. Ellis a key figure in the creation of
the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle, has underscored the foolhardiness
of unwise small community sewage facilities:
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United States. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Intergovernmental responsibilities for water supply and sewage disposal in metropolitan areas., book, October 1962; Washington, D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1424/m1/52/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.