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Idea floated for alternative septic financing for homeowners

BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO
BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO A new idea to protect the Island’s ground and surface waters has been voiced.

While the Water Quality Improvement Projects Advisory Board pushes forward with plans to offer grants to Island residents and business owners to upgrade their septic systems, a Hay Beach man believes many Massachusetts communities are proceeding in a better direction.

Instead of outright grants, Gordon Gooding reported places such as Nantucket offering government loans that, as they’re paid back, create a revolving source of money for people in need of assistance in the future to upgrade their septic systems.

Mr. Gooding has been critical of the move here to provide grants, calling it “a giveaway program.”

Nantucket voters in a recent town meeting approved a “Community Septic Management Program,” managed through the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), to make loans available to qualified homeowners.

To qualify, homeowners must have a failed septic system that lies within an environmentally sensitive area and the DEP must certify that the system meets those requirements.

Loans incur a 2 percent interest charge and are to be repaid over a 20-year period with payments due every six months tacked onto homeowners’ municipal tax bills. Loans are secured as a betterment assessment and may be paid off ahead of time without penalty or when a homeowner transfers property.

On Nantucket, loans cover septic system repairs, replacements or upgrades.

In implementing the program, Nantucket left the door open to considering loans to property owners in other areas of that Island, with those to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

In other areas of Massachusetts, loans are being offered under a septic repair program, but are tied to property owners’ family size and income level.

Shelter Island’s water advisory board is not recommending considerations based on income, at least not for the initial year of the program. But the board is leaving open the possibility of revisiting terms of its grants next year, with the possibility it could recommend adding income considerations.