RCAP Wastewater Lagoons Operations and Maintenance Manual

A 2026 field manual on running and maintaining wastewater treatment lagoons, the workhorse technology for small rural systems across Appalachia.

Lagoon systems treat wastewater for a large share of small rural communities because they are cheap to build and forgiving to operate, but forgiving is not the same as maintenance-free, and lagoon performance problems are a common driver of permit violations in small systems. RCAP released this operations and maintenance manual in August 2026 as a practical reference for operators, boards, and the technical assistance providers who support them. It covers how lagoon treatment actually works, routine operational tasks and monitoring, seasonal and weather-related performance issues, sludge accumulation and removal, berm and liner maintenance, odor and algae problems, common causes of permit exceedances, and when a system has outgrown the technology. RCAP produces these guides for communities with limited staff and no in-house engineering, so the language stays plain. It is a free download from RCAP's resource library.