A plan to expand the Leland Township sewer system could provide the capacity to hook up more than 120 homes between the unincorporated villages of Leland and Lake Leelanau along the south shore of North Lake Leelanau.

Many people believe homes along the lakeshore are already connected to a municipal sewer, said Matt Heiman, land protection specialist with the Leelanau Conservancy. That’s because a township sewer line runs along M-204 from Leland to the township treatment plant off Popp Road in Provemont Ponds Natural Area.

“This is a step in the right direction toward alleviating one of the biggest threats to the lake — nutrient loading,” said Heiman, when told about the proposal.

Comments will be accepted through tomorrow on a township application to the state Department of Environmental Quality to add six treatment beds to the township plant — essentially increasing capacity by 50 percent. Where those extra sewer hook-ups will be extended and their price tags are a long way from being decided, according to Wayne Wunderlich, chair of the township sewer committee.

Should the expansion be approved, Wunderlich said the obvious place to offer municipal sewer is along a section of North Lake Leelanau lakeshore. The area is now occupied by homes with private septic systems built in the shade of cedar trees.

Wunderlich and his wife, Dorothy, operate Cedar Haven Cottages along the lake in the area eyed for the expansion. He remembers the struggle in the early 1990s to get the township sewer approved, and hopes such deep divisions can be avoided this time.

Although the cost to hook into the system will be much higher than 14 years ago when sewer operations began, Wunderlich said other factors are at play that might quiet opposition.

For one, many of the 122 homes in the affected area are hooked into holding tanks because of poorly drained soils. The cost to have the tanks pumped and their effluent properly disposed of has skyrocketed in recent years.

“If they have to take it into Traverse City, that’s going to cost about $400,” said Wunderlich. Homes that are occupied full time usually need their tanks pumped every 3-4 weeks, or every “6 to 8 weeks if they are ultra-conservative,” said Wunderlich.

And there is an ecological aspect to extending sewer along the Lakeshore. Wunderlich said that the 500 holding tanks located in Leelanau County — representing just 3.6 percent of all privately held septic systems — contribute 68 percent of the waste that must be treated.

Homeowners who paid for engineered systems, Wunderlich acknowledged, will not find an economical benefit to hooking into the system.

“Some are validated and work well . . . but if you put a line down there they are going to have to hook in,” he said.

The present tap-in fee is $6,000, although Wunderlich expected the cost to
greatly increase for hook-ups outside of the established Leland and Lake Leelanau sewer districts to cover the cost of expansion. A 2006 estimate provided by Gosling-Czubak, the Traverse City engineering firm that is handling the township application to the DEQ, put the cost to expand at $850,000.

Wunderlich said the township treatment system expansion was driven by a need to prepare for growth within established districts. The township has about 57 “residential equivalent units” (REUs) — the amount of treatment capacity needed to handle the waste from an average household — unspoken for at a plant equipped to handle 510 REUs. Remaining capacity could be eaten up quickly in Lake Leelanau, where 60 percent of the village is zoned for commercial use, he said.

Establishing the sewer system took a toll on the community. Recalls were initiated against all five members of the Township Board, with the effort to oust supervisor Fred Roth proving successful. One Lake Leelanau resident was forced by court order to have his home hooked into the system.

Wunderlich was involved as a sewer advocate, joining with a handful of other lakefront property owners hoping to have their land included in the municipal sewer.

“We all put up money to have the (engineers) look at it with the provision that we would be reimbursed if we weren’t included,” said Wunderlich. But the engineers recommended against including the property owners, he said.

“To be perfectly honest, it didn’t make sense to us,” he said.

Wunderlich is hoping expansion of the system, whose bonds will be paid off in 2010, turns out to be much less contentious. He said once the township has a permit to expand, a survey would be made of lakefront owners to determine their views.

Other property owners outside of the present districts are hoping to be hooked up, including Lake Leelanau farmer Bruce Price. He owns commercially zoned land south of M-204 and east of South Lake Leelanau Drive. Price quizzed Township Board members at their meeting last week to learn how many hookups are available.

“There is also talk that people in the lake district should be on their own system,” said supervisor Harry Larkin at the meeting.

Expansion already has some critics, Wunderlich conceded, including members of the township Parks Commission who are opposed to expanding sewer facilities at Provemont Ponds.

And both Wunderlich and the Conservancy’s Heiman acknowledge no evidence exists that present septic systems are malfunctioning.

Heiman said the Leelanau County Board has rejected efforts to begin a septic system inspection program, meaning that no mechanism is in place to find potential problems until it’s too late.