All six people who applied to be on the committee to rewrite Brown County’s septic system ordinance were accepted as new members last month.
Chairman Thomi Elmore is calling all of them to make sure they still want to serve.
The applicants were Richard Hall, an attorney; Kara Hammes, who has a background in public health and is a licensed real estate agent; Randy Jones, a retired environmental health specialist from Henry County; Brad Williamson, who works in environmental management for the Indiana Department of Transportation and is a real estate agent; Russ Herndon, a member of the Brown County Area Plan Commission; and Clint Studabaker, a member of the Brown County Regional Sewer District board and retired environmental and civil engineer.
“I think the more, the merrier,” said Dr. Norman Oestrike, the county’s health officer. He’s also on the committee along with health department staff members John Kennard, Jennifer Heller Rugenstein, Ernie Reed and Judy Hess; and county health board members Cathy Rountree and Elmore.
The committee’s next meeting will be at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 28 in the downstairs conference room of the County Office Building.
None of the three elected Brown County commissioners attended the July 31 committee meeting. Hess said she contacted them two or three weeks ago to get one of them to commit, but she’d received no response.
The septic ordinance committee wants the county commissioners to be “actively involved” in this rewrite process because they’ll eventually be voting on whether or not to accept the rewrite. Committee members believe that knowing why certain parts are in the ordinance will help them.
The septic ordinance applies to all homes in Brown County that aren’t connected to a sewer system.
The approach the committee is taking is to revise the ordinance the commissioners looked at in March, not start from scratch. The public also gave comments on it at a hearing that month. Committee members inserted the public’s comments into a copy of that ordinance so that everyone could see what the concerns were with each section. They’ll also be looking at what the state code says compared to the county’s rules.
Committee members also plan to gather septic rules from other counties with soil similar to Brown County’s, like Jackson and Morgan. Brown County’s clay soil has been cited as a reason why septic rules here have to be stricter than state code.
They’d also like to know if other rural counties require a septic system inspection before a home sells. That was one part of the last ordinance draft that came under fire.
Elmore said one of the committee’s challenges will be to change the public’s perception of the health department. “We’re here for the public, working with them. That audience (at the March public hearing) was full of fear,” she said. “When they don’t understand what’s going on or why, fear sets in, and you’ve lost it, basically. You’re going nowhere when people don’t understand what you’re doing.”
The public has said that they want proof there’s a problem with septic systems here, Rountree said.
Jones, the retired Henry County health department employee, said his department had to gather such data back in the ‘80s.
Henry County’s problem was so bad then that the health department put a moratorium on new septic system permits, preventing people from building, he said. Water samples were taken from all over the county and all but one sample showed fecal coliform bacteria at extremely high levels, he remembered.
The argument made about Brown County’s water samples is that no one’s proven if the bacteria in local creeks are coming from animal waste or human waste. Kennard said he’s recently learned that the state health department can do that testing, for free.
“Most people, they don’t think they have a problem. If their commode flushes, their bathtub drains, they don’t have a problem according to them. … It’s hard to send somebody a letter to tell them you have to put in a new septic system when their system is so-called ‘working’ for them, because the system is going into a stream. They don’t see it, they don’t smell it, they don’t step in it, so they ‘don’t have a problem,’” Jones said.
