Two Birds With One Tiny House – Editorial
The Falmouth Enterprise
May 24, 2024

The town is facing two major problems, and the solution to one often exacerbates the other: wastewater and affordable housing. Unless a development is on the town sewer, opposition to affordable housing (whatever other motives may be in play) can legitimately be grounded in the fact that more toilets will further degrade our coastal ponds.

But a possible route to increasing rental housing stock without environmental damage exists: tiny houses and accessory dwelling units with urine-diverting toilets.

Adding a tiny house—or ADU—to your property is constrained by the size of your septic system. If your three-bedroom house is on a three-bedroom septic, you cannot increase the number of households occupying your lot. But if the tiny house inhabitant diverts their urine out of the waste stream, the antagonism between the two goals disappears.

Units, if rented, would need to be rented year-round.

The chairman of the water quality management committee has described the science of pee-cycling as “blindly correct.” Urine diversion works; the problem is public acceptance. But if you add in the incentive that homeowners could add new, income-generating dwellings to their property, without the expense of upgrading a septic system, it may spur the creation of new housing.

What to do with the pee? Boats have their holding tanks pumped, and the waste goes somewhere, so this shouldn’t be a barrier. Perhaps a septic hauler could empty the pee collection tank and take it to the wastewater treatment plant, which is equivalent to having the unit on the town sewer. Once enough urine-diverting toilets are in use, the town could invest in a sterilization tank, and it’s likely that a market for this valuable fertilizer would develop.

How to ensure compliance? Include a provision in the bylaw that allows for inspections on short notice; anyone caught swapping out their toilet or renting short term would pay a giant fine and lose their occupancy permit for a period of time.

Who will want to rent these tiny houses? For one, the large pool of young science workers who rotate through WHOI and MBL: the research assistants just out of college who are clocking lab experience between applying to grad schools, the grad students themselves, and the postdocs who only need a place to stay for a year or two. It’s likely that these young environmental scientists will be eager to try out a technology that manages chemical elements in a more ecologically responsible manner. And they’ll be more than eager to not spend the summer couch surfing or living in a tent.

Two Birds With One Tiny House – Editorial – The Falmouth Enterprise