If you want to help rewrite local laws governing septic systems, here’s your chance.
The Brown County Health Department’s new Septic Ordinance Committee will meet for the second time on Tuesday, July 31. Anyone wishing to serve on the committee should send an email to [email protected] before that meeting, said chairperson Thomi Elmore.
The committee is reforming after the public came out in droves in the spring to comment on the ordinance. A different committee had worked on a revision for more than two years. Currently, Brown County is operating under a septic ordinance passed in 1997.
Because most homes in Brown County don’t have sewer access, the rules affect a majority of residents.
At the July 17 meeting, the people at the committee table were Elmore, health board members Cathy Rountree and Dr. Bill Irvine, Brown County Health Officer Dr. Norman Oestrike, and health department employees Jennifer Heller Rugenstein, John Kennard and Judy Hess.
About eight other people sat in the audience, but the committee didn’t take comments. This was only their first meeting, and they’d just received a transcript of the public hearing on the new law from March, so none of them were prepared to actually start making changes yet.
It helps the committee to receive comments in writing, Elmore said. “I would appreciate a letter or some specific comments about your perspective and your interest,” she told the room. “Then, we can better assess where you can help us and where we can help you.”
Oestrike said that the point of defining what was and was not a bedroom in the ordinance was just a way to figure out how much water the house would be using. If a home’s septic system isn’t designed to handle that much wastewater flow, it will fail, and that can pose a public health risk. Buyers also take a financial risk when they purchase a home without knowing the capacity of or condition of the septic system, he said.
He believes the committee needs to decide the principles of what’s going to be in the ordinance first before they do any rewriting.
Some people at the table were open to the idea of allowing affidavits, whereby a homeowner could say that only a certain number of possible “bedrooms” in the home would actually be used as bedrooms. That affidavit would travel with the home’s deed, so that any future buyers would know about that restriction. Affidavits also were discussed at the health board meeting which followed this committee meeting.
Kennard said the public needs to hear more scientific facts about how septic systems work, how water can become polluted, what constitutes a failure and other details, or the board isn’t going to have much luck passing a new ordinance.
Other big concerns with the ordinance have been fairness and due process, Elmore said. It needs to be made more clear what the process is for inspecting a septic system, what makes it fail or pass, and what happens if a failure is found.
Another unresolved issue is the level of responsibility that real estate agents have. Whether or not septic systems should be inspected at the time of sale was debated in meetings last year.
For the July 31 meeting, committee members suggested that they have copies of the state code to compare to the last proposed county ordinance, so they could see what the state mandates and what Brown County is suggesting should be different.
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if interested in serving on the committee, email [email protected] before the next meeting on July 31.
That meeting will start at 2:30 p.m. in the County Office Building’s Salmon Room.
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