On Wednesday, the Board of Health discussed draft regulations for reducing nitrogen emissions to Wareham’s watershed.

Since April, the members have been working to create new standards for nitrogen output after Town Meeting voters repealed a bylaw that required new developments contribute no nitrogen to the town's watershed.

The previous bylaw was deemed unenforceable by the Board of Health.

According to members, the new regulations are intended to enhance existing regulations enforced by the state Department of Environmental protection.

The focus of the regulations is on the correction of failed sewer systems. Being a natural product of bathroom activity, most of nitrogen pollution comes from incompletely treated septic waste. The worst polluters are failed septic systems.

On Wednesday, the Board sought the advice of Town Counsel associate Jason Talerman, of Blatman Bobrowski & Mead, to help finalize the language of the regulations.

Members discussed expanding the definition of “new developments” to include any failed systems that routine inspections determined would need to be replaced anyway. The regulation would require any newly installed systems keep annual nitrogen emissions below state standards, in the event their system fail.

Additionally, the draft document states residents who are required to replace their system would be charged an annual $75 monitoring fee during the first two years following its installation.

The fee would be paid to the Board of Health to help absorb the cost of oversight, inspection, monitor, and enforcement, according to the draft document.

Upon receiving Talerman’s legal input, the Board of Health decided to continue its meeting on the subject to Wednesday, August 17 in order for the document to be reworded.

Members said a public hearing will be scheduled once the language of the regulations is close to finalized in early or mid-September.

These regulations are the latest solution to a decades-long concern of excess nitrogen in Wareham’s waterways.

In addition to failed septic systems, nitrogen also comes from fertilizer: on lawns, on cranberry bogs, on golf courses, etc.

Unlike toxic pollutants, nitrogen won’t give you cancer or cause birth defects or make anyone sick. It is nitrogen’s ability to make things grow that makes it a problem.

When nitrogen gets into streams, ponds, and Buzzards Bay, algae and other “invasive species” grow uncontrollably. In the process, sucking up a lot of oxygen. Without the oxygen they need, fish and shellfish die.