Self-help is a collective effort, a community working together to construct a wastewater or drinking water treatment system. Self-help projects cost far less than traditionally funded infrastructure projects, allowing both the community and the state to do more with dwindling grant funds. With Self-help, communities come together, discover or rediscover their own local resources, get to know their neighbors, restore or enhance community pride, and foster an environment for controlled growth based, not on lack of services, but on services sized for the desired amount of growth. A successful Self-help project can and does energize a community and typically leads to additional community projects. Community participation is not only crucial to the project, but in some respects the most important outcome of the project.
Residents feel a strong sense of ownership and involvement in the decision-making process.
The result of this is that the community has a system that they feel is theirs and into which they have invested sweat equity. With this sense of ownership, communities take great pride in their systems and naturally take better care of the system. And The Environment, and Ability of the Community to Sustain Itself and Grow. Although never documented, Aurora's rate is likely as high based on limited studies and anecdotal information. Westfir's compliance issues are equally severe.