INSIDE

County revamping septic rules

By Meg Olson

Whatcom County Council will be considering revisions to proposed septic inspection rules to make it easier for homeowners to afford both inspections and upgrades.

The Whatcom County Health Department will introduce a new on-site-sewage system local management plan to council on January 29. The plan is intended to make new state septic regulations, adopted by the county last April, work at the local level.

The state law requires conventional septic systems to be inspected every three years, and other systems, such as pressure mounds, every year. Under initial county regulations those inspections needed to be performed by licensed inspectors.

“One of the things the county council asked us to look at is for homeowners to do the evaluation themselves under certain circumstances and report to the health department,” said county environmental health manager John Wolpers.

Under the proposed plan an initial inspection by a licensed inspector would be required of all systems in the county.

Homeowners who take a class offered by the health department will be qualified to do subsequent inspections themselves.

If county council adopts the proposal Wolpers said they plan to start implementing it in April 2008, starting with the Drayton Harbor Watershed and then moving to other shoreline areas in the county. “We will start sending out postcards reminding them they need to get their initial evaluations,” Wolpers said. The evaluations will be recorded in the existing database of septic systems in the county, Whatcom County Maintenance and Operation, or WHAMO.

“I am also trying to figure out how Whatcom County can take part in a program that exists to create low-interest loans/grants for qualifying homeowners who are found to need repairs to their systems,” said county council member Barbara Brenner.

Brenner has been working with Wolpers and county treasurer Steve Oliver to investigate similar loan program in other counties. “There are some other counties that have similar programs,” Oliver said. “They’re all administered differently but they have the same goal of assisting property owners in meeting septic rules.”

Oliver said his research had been preliminary, but from the administrative side there were several viable options. “The bigger question is the policy question and what council has to answer is, do we want to do this?”

Brenner is asking any property owners with septic systems who have concerns or questions about the new rules or the possibility of a loan program to contact her at bbgun1010@aol.com.