Although municipal sewer systems keep
creeping out beyond the suburbs, the
number of houses that handle water disposal
on site remains much the same as 40
years ago. In fact, about one-fourth of all
houses built today are equipped with private
septic systems. Nationwide, approximately
15 million on-site septic systems
serve 20 percent of the population.
In addition, there are still millions of
outhouses (dubbed "Ameri-can" by Jack
Miller, a poetic, longtime acquaintance of
mine from Maryland) and "straightpipers"
—people who simply run a pipe
from the house to a nearby river or lake (a
practice that now is strictly illegal in most
states).
Today's septic systems are a considerable
improvement over our earlier cesspools,
which consisted of a