Then Hauer walked outside, under a canopy of forest that marches unbroken for 100 miles, and looked across the spongy ground for signs of the brilliant red dye he had tipped into the cabin's commode.
“It immediately came to the surface and started running down a little creek and into the lake,” Hauer said. “Immediately.”
“People think it's OK as long as it's not backing up into the house,” Hauer said. “In reality, even if it flushes you could have a significant problem.”
Significant problems, in fact, are exactly what Hauer was looking for when he flushed that biodegradable dye this past summer. The professor of limnology - based out of the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station - had been asked by Glacier Park officials to check out some suspect septics, because “basically what we have up here are a bunch of very old cabins that very well may be leaching septic waste into Lake McDonald.”
So said Brace Hayden, the park's regional issues specialist.
According to Hayden, “we've had an issue with septics for years” and with algae growth offshore, but it's been since 1988 that anyone studied the problem closely.
Back then, Hayden said, scientists used a machine that looked for the telltale glow called “fluorescence,” often caused by whiteners in laundry detergent. If the water fluoresces, then the whiteners are in it, which means the septics are leaking.
Sure enough, researchers found the glow, Hayden said, “but it was difficult to pinpoint the exact source,” what with the clusters of cabins. At that point, he said, the matter was acknowledged and dropped.
Two decades later, in the summer of 2006, Hayden got to thinking about that fluorescence, wondering if anything had changed over the years. And so he and Hauer embarked on a two-year study, the results of which will be published later this fall.
They began, Hauer said, by looking for biological and chemical evidence in the lake itself. They again pulled out the fluorometer, and also examined the ratio between organic matter and fluorescence. Then they tested for phosphorous and for nitrate and for other markers that might indicate septic trouble.
Finally, Hauer said, they handed each and every homeowner on Lake McDonald's shoreline a packet of dye, and asked them to “do the big flush.” Because a septic problem, well, it floats.
And then the scientists waited, in kayaks, just offshore, looking for dye.
The biological and chemical testing suggested considerable dye would appear, Hauer said, but none did.
“It's very possible that we didn't get 100 percent compliance from the landowners,” Hayden said.
And why should they? After all, if the answer is a failed septic, then the best-case scenario is a $10,000 fix.
“It's hard to ask for voluntary compliance,” said Joe Russell, director of Flathead County's public health office. “A homeowner knows he's turning himself in for a $10,000 to $15,000 bill. That's a fact. That's the hard reality.”
And so Hauer and Hayden went back to the lake, where the circumstantial evidence still floated, and they tightened their focus. A couple of cabin clusters, in particular, seemed likely hot spots - and this summer they met with those homeowners one at a time.
This time, they asked permission to do the dye flush themselves.
“Most people were OK with it,” Hauer said, “but one landowner asked, ‘What good can come of this?' I couldn't believe it. I mean, knowing that your poop's not going into Glacier Park's lakes, is that not good enough?”
And although that particular landowner's septic was working fine, Hauer said, not all were.
“I'm sure there are still cottages on the lake that don't have more than a couple of 55-gallon drums buried in the backyard,” he said.
Hayden figures somewhere upward of half the cabins ringing Lake McDonald are hooked to the park's sewage treatment system. But the pipe doesn't reach everyone, and many of the private septic systems are far outdated.
By definition, the private lands inside Glacier Park were in private hands before the park became a park, back in 1910. That means many of the septic systems have handled several generations of inholder families.
“We strongly encourage landowners to keep their systems pumped out,” Hayden said, “and we encourage anyone who can to hook up to our sewage treatment system.”
In fact, the house where Hauer watched his dye surface and trickle into the lake should soon be on the pipeline.
“We're grateful for that,” Russell said, “because it's a bad site. We've been there, and there's no way to put a modern system on that property.”
But until the landowner hooks up, Hayden said, “we basically shut them down. We told them they could not live in the house until they fixed the situation.”
Which is exactly why not a few landowners simply don't want to ask the question. The answer is almost never good, and nearly always expensive.
“No, it isn't cheap,” Hayden admitted, “but it's certainly better than contaminating the lake.”
The same could be said for the National Park Service expanding its pipeline around the lake, a move that Hayden suspects would prove prohibitively expensive.
He figures maybe
40 percent of the Lake McDonald inholders are on the park's sewage system, and maybe 10 percent more are close enough to the pipe to hook up. But that leaves half with no solution other than upgraded septics.
“These are good people who generally want to do the right thing,” Hayden said. “But many cabin owners don't know where that stuff is going. It's just out of sight, out of mind.”
Unless, of course, you have a fluorometer.
Hauer, whose office is on Flathead Lake, knows the problem is not isolated to Glacier Park. He suggests that anyone who cannot show evidence of having upgraded their septic in the past 20 years be required to conduct a dye test.
But that idea just gives Russell a headache. Over the past 15 years, his office has approved about 10,500 septics. Prior to that, he said, the valley was home to maybe 25,000 active systems.
It's too many to check individually. He'd rather work to put entire neighborhoods on a main line to the treatment plant.
“We really need to get on it and replace those old systems, especially up in the park,” Russell said. Because with age, “they clog up with black, gooey, gelatinous crap. It's not pretty.”
The only good news, Russell said, is that much of modern lakeshore development is being done by people with money, and not a little of that money is being spent on newfangled septics that actually work.
Up in the park, though, many of the homes have been passed down through family, and “a surprising number of those people aren't what you'd call rich,” Hayden said. “It's a big hit to the pocketbook.”
Still, Russell said, “at some point people have to realize that they've inherited a very valuable piece of property, and they need to reinvest in it.”
If the lot's too small or too close the lake, he said, never mind. He'll work with owners to upgrade existing failed systems.
“Water flows downhill,” Russell said, “but we can pump sewage anywhere. If it's a replacement, then people should know we'll be as flexible as possible to make sure they can remain in their homes.”
Just as they have in the house that Hauer flushed.
“That particular house should serve as a wake-up call for park landowners to take action,” Hayden said. “We don't want to be the toilet police, but we do want people to step up and do the right thing.”
Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com.
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