The Town Council voted Wednesday night, April 19, to postpone the requirement for high-tech septic systems in critical resource areas of Block Island for nine months. It also agreed to revisit the issue after three and six months with an eye to shortening the suspension period.

In all other respects, the council kept its innovative ordinance —Section 506 of the Zoning Ordinance — in place to protect the island's groundwater, ponds and coastal waters.

The decision came after a long and contentious public hearing. It was a compromise between those who urged less time (three or six months) and those who urged a year's delay for residents to come up to speed on the so-called T2 technology. This is the system designed to more effectively treat household wastes so nitrogen and bacteria do not infiltrate groundwater or ponds in the watershed and wellhead areas of the island.

The delay is intended to give time for the wastewater manager, whom the town was expected to employ months ago and will finally hire very shortly, time to establish procedures for determining where such systems are needed and to build on-island support for installing and maintaining such systems.

The decision was made with a wary eye on what is expected of Block Island in its partnership with two mainland towns and the University of Rhode Island's Cooperative Extension On-Site Wastewater Training Center in using a $3-million EPA grant for a demonstration project. Block Island is to receive half the grant for playing the lead role.

The plan is that the island's experience with 506 will help Charlestown and South Kingstown devise methods to protect the beleaguered Green Hill Pond, and subsequently will help communities throughout the region and the nation confront similar pollution problems.

But Interim Town Manager Nancy Dodge told the council Wednesday that she had talked with an EPA official who thought that a brief T2 suspension "would probably not be a great setback to the EPA grant."

The Planning Board recommended that Section 506 be kept intact and thatcouncil delay "the shortest possible length of time … not more than six months" after the wastewater manager is on board. Or, the board added, council might postpone some T2 requirements. Dodge proposed a delay of all T2 requirements for six or nine months; the island's resident advisory group, the Ad Hoc Scientific Review Committee, had a similar suggestion.

This was not enough for several critics in the audience. Robert Gilpin called the high-tech systems "unproven" and "too complicated" for island technicians. "We're still where we were six months ago," he said.

"We're not where we were six months ago," responded Planning Board Chair Norris Pike. The permitting process at the DEM has become easier, technical manuals have been developed for installers, the unfamiliar systems are in fact "tried and true" and are in use "throughout the country.

The 506 provisions that remain in place include mandatory inspection, some modest retrofitting of conventional systems and an end to the use of cesspools. On most of the island, except in the critical resource areas, conventional systems remain acceptable.