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IUCCESSEUL SOLUTIONS To SPRAWL : A NORTH CAROLINA APPROACH Lincoln , and Mecklenburg Counties , the city of Treating the water onsite made the reuse of the trea- Gastonia, and other foundations and agencies worked to sured community school feasible by eliminating the obtain land along the lake shore or place it under con- need to pipe sewage to a treatment plant, decreasing the servation easements through purchase or donation . To chances * of an environmentally-threatening sewage sys- date, over half of the shoreline, about 5 , 000 acres , has tem failure, and cutting down on the cost of water and been protected from development that might otherwise fertilizer used to maintain the landscaping . As a result, have increased runoff into the lake and raised pollution what was once an eyesore and a safety hazard has levels . Many members of the Initiative are now expand- become the home of several businesses with a minimal ing their focus to protect land around critical tributaries impact on the surrounding environment , that empty into the lake . R '�- 9 C H OL 913 GREEN BUILDING SAVES A CbMMUNITY LAND - MAR I< , CUTS COSTS Built over 50 years ago in a remote part of Chatham County, Bell 's School sits on the shore of Lake Jordan . It had served as a public school for children of the sur- rounding rural community and later as a parochial school . For two decades , the building sat vacant and tiatended until purchased and renovated by software distributor EMJ America in the mid4990s . Because of its remote location and proximity to a nutri- ent-sensitive water supply, both conventional sewer and septic systems were infeasible and would not meet cur- rent environmental standards . Hal House, a soil scientist and wetlands ecologist, designed a wastewater recycling system for the property that makes use of artificial " hill marshes " to filter and treat 1 , 200 gallons of water each day in a way that mimics natural methods . In addition to recycling the water onsite for reuse, the system pro- vides an aesthetically-pleasing landscape feature for employees and visitors .