In response to the increasingly acute financial problems presented to small communities and rural residential areas in the past five years due to water pollution control requirements, new emphasis is being placed on examining the possible use of nonconventional sewerage systems. When conventional community systems have been proposed for these areas, the magnitude of the cost to individual homeowners has quite often resulted only in delays in taking any kind of action. Some research and development work has taken place over many years on individual on-site treatment and disposal systems as well as non-conventional systems such as pressure sewers. However, the most recent work, initiated because of the high cost of the conventional systems, has only begun to become familiar to consulting engineers and public officials in the wastewater management field.