Poor performance of on-site wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) poses local and regional risks to public health and environmental quality. In the United States, local regulations control system design through permits issued at the time of installation. However, regulatory focus on one-time controls does not account for factors that influence performance after installation, notably asset management choices made by residential property owners. We develop a statistical method to predict performance over the OWTS life cycle to identify vulnerabilities and potential controls that reduce the risk of failure and contaminant release. A regression model based on Generalized Additive Models for location, scale and shape uses data from public records of reported OWTS failures, repairs and replacements, inspections, and assessed property values from Boulder County, Colorado, which has 14,300 OWTS. Severity of required system repairs and replacements over a 40-year period was associated with five factors: structural value, house square footage, number of required inspections, homeowner expenditures, and frequency of OWTS upgrades. Model results suggested that mandatory inspections through a mechanism such as renewable permits would significantly reduce life cycle repair/failure frequency and severity, lowering OWTS costs to owners and reducing public exposure to wastewater contaminants.
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