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Influx of nitrogen from anthropogenic sources is primarily responsible for coastal eutrophication globally and in the Waquoit Bay NERR – the latter being the area of study of this project. The predominant source of anthropogenic nitrogen in the WBNERR bay is the effluent from septic tank systems, which serve more than 85 % of the homes in this region. Conventional septic systems remove at best about 23 % of the nitrogen in the influent wastewater; thus, there is a great need to introduce technologies that can be applied to onsite wastewater treatment that can achieve higher percentage of nitrogen removal. Some Innovative/Alternative (I/A) technologies have recently been evaluated that can remove almost 66 % of the influent nitrogen. Conventional heterotrophic denitrification using an external electron donor can produce better results but suffers from the limitations of (i) using a toxic/inhibitory chemical such as methanol, and (ii) producing large amounts of biological sludge that has to handled/disposed of. We propose a technology- Autotrophic Biological Denitrification- that has the potential to achieve almost complete nitrogen removal and yet does not suffer from the limitations o