INSIDE

County council
discusses septic regulations

The Whatcom County Council discussed new state-mandated on-site sewage (OSS) regulations late last month but in the end decided to wait for more specific recommendations from the Whatcom County health department before making a decision about if and when a homeowner would be allowed to inspect his own septic system.

The health department, following recommendations from an ad-hoc advisory committee and its own health board, had been in favor of having all inspections done by licensed and trained inspectors.

At issue is the potential costs for compliance that would be up to the homeowner. The inspections themselves are not at issue since the state passed a requirement last year for inspections every one to three years depending on the complexity and design of the system. They left the method and enforcement up to the counties.

The cost for inspections, for which the county currently charges $150, could be lower if homeowners were allowed to do their own under certain circumstances. The county council had received the health department’s draft of proposed regulations last August that required all inspections to be done by licensed specialists, but following some community discussion Whatcom County executive Pete Kremen asked the health department to work with council member Barbara Brenner in amending the ordinance to allow for homeowner inspections in certain circumstances.

One compromise would be to relax requirements in non-sensitive areas but the county has not yet determined exactly where those are. Several figures about the cost of licensed inspections were mentioned but council members repeatedly said that they did not know what fees would be charged.

Realtor Peter Roberts pointed out that if the inspection charge was $350 as some people have said then to do all of the estimated 30,000 systems in the county would cost over $10 million. He said he felt that the cost and the responsibility should be borne by the health department.

“Instead of that they’re mandating a $10 million business and putting that on the shoulders of the homeowner,” Roberts said, “and besides, what’s wrong with the way we’ve been treating sewage since time immemorial? Why all these rules, all of a sudden?”

He also described a liability issue for real estate sales people, “because these rules went into effect on April 2, and we have had several properties close but there’s no form to fill out under the new rules that indicates compliance. If there’s no systems status report and the buyer has closed, he’s in effect signed off on the system. Then, if there are problems down the road the buyer’s agent may find himself buying a new system.”

Health department director Regina Delahunt countered by saying that they did have report forms available. When the final plan is submitted she said that it may be that all systems would have to have an initial inspection by a licensed inspector, or that a homeowner could do his own after attending a class, although the rules would differ in some sensitive areas. “We still don’t have the sensitive areas defined,” she said, “but the county board of health will consider self-inspection under certain conditions. We’ll take that into account.”

Jan Hansen of Blaine said afterward that for those who found the possible cost of annual inspections burdensome, her bill for a year’s worth of sewer service in Blaine is about $700, two to three times the likely cost of annual inspections. “We also talked in the Drayton Harbor Shellfish Advisory Committee about how many of the systems around Drayton Harbor were failing, but most of those have been identified and repaired as far as I know,” she said. Still, the health department’s desire for licensed inspections was motivated in part by the fact that when inspections were done in a limited area ten years ago, funded by a state grant, 20 percent of the systems were found to be failing. Drayton Harbor oyster farmer Geoff Menzies, who served on the ad-hoc health department committee to devise the new procedures, said “With 30,000 or so systems in the county, we don’t know yet what we have, but there could be a real problem. We just don’t know, so we need high-quality inspections. After all, the polluters should pay.”

Delahunt promised to make it clear when homeowners should and shouldn’t do their own inspections. “We need to bring more information back The plan must be submitted by July 1,” she said.

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