Point Reyes Light - July 21, 2005
Proposed septic laws draw heavy fire on North Coast
By Peter Jamison
A more diverse crowd united by common indignation would be hard to imagine.
Homeowners, county health officials, septic system consultants, scientists, and realtors from across northern California packed the North Coast Regional Water Board hearingroom in Santa Rosa Monday night for a public scoping meeting on proposed statewide septic system regulations. The regulations would affect the 9,000 septic systems in Marin County, most of them concentrated in West Marin.
Through the parties’ various complaints Monday night, an underlying message was clear: that in their present form, the new standards are acceptable neither to county governments nor to those who own and use California’s 1.2 million septic systems.
"You’re going to break Mendocino County’s back with this," Scott Miller of Mendocino County said, brandishing a copy of the regulations in his hand to approving murmurs from the crowd.
"This seems like you’re taking a sledgehammer approach to some serious problems," Pat Healey of Sonoma County said. "I’m not sure who put these [regulations] together, but to a layman a lot of it doesn’t make sense."
A panel of state Water Resources Control Board officials remained stoic before critics’ attacks. Civil engineer Tam Doduc of the water board, who conducted the meeting, periodically requested that speakers conclude their remarks so the public comment session could move forward.
Environmental consultant Robert Feinbaum – who runs the Oakland-based Hydro Nova, a wastewater policy group – held up a copy of the letter announcing the scoping meetings, which was sent out around the state, and noted that the street where the Santa Rosa meeting was held had been misspelled.
"There’s no ‘Skyline Boulevard’ in Santa Rosa," Feinbaum said (the street’s name is in fact Skylane Boulevard). "I think that’s a metaphor for these regulations – staff has tried awful hard, but they ain’t got it right."
Stakeholders ‘ignored’
Feinbaum’s comment referred to a frequent complaint among homeowners, system consultants, local governments, and health agencies – collectively referred to as septic system "stakeholders" – that the state, in drafting and revising the regulations, has ignored the situation on the ground.
The regulations were called for by Assembly Bill 885, passed in 2000, which mandated statewide standards for septic systems. California is currently one of only two states that still lack such standards.
AB 885 required that the board work in concert with stakeholders, but at Monday night’s meeting those who should have been consulted stated plainly that they felt ignored.
"What the state board staff and their consultants have done is ignore the stakeholders," said realtor Mark Stevens of Sebastopol. "It was in AB 885 that you were supposed to work with these people, and you didn’t." His comments drew applause.
In their present form, the regulations apply to septic systems that are constructed or replaced, those subject to major repairs, those that pool or discharge wastewater to the surface, and those judged to pose a threat to "water quality objectives." Such systems would have to be upgraded to meet heightened standards for the containment of bacteria, such as fecal coliform, and potentially harmful chemicals commonly found in wastewater, such as nitrogen.
Systems around Tomales Bay at stake
Among the water board’s most controversial decisons has been to extend the new standards to septic systems – even those that appear to be functioning well – located within 600 feet of an "impaired" waterbody where pollution is a concern. Tomales Bay and Sonoma County’s Russian River are both deemed "impaired" by state and regional water boards.
Additional treatment of septic effluent would be required of homeowners whose septic tanks lie within this region. While methods of supplemental treatment vary, they usually involve costly devices for the filtration of wastewater. The water board estimates that such "supplemental systems" generally cost between $20,000 and $30,000, and it would fall to homeowners to foot the bill.
To many, that seems like a lot to ask of those whose conventional septic systems are in working order.
Jack McClellan of Bolinas told The Light this week that imposing expensive new regulations on working septic systems constitutes "a regulatory taking."
"The rule of law is being replaced by bureaucratic discretion," said McClellan, who serves as a director of the Bolinas Public Utility District.
Marleigh Wood, staff legal counsel for the state water board, said that despite homeowners’ concerns, it would be "a very long route" before anyone was severely punished for non-compliance with the new regulations. After several notices from the enforcing agency (which could be either the county or the regional water board), she said, fines could be assessed for septic systems that fail to meet the regulations.
"I can’t imagine that going after individual homeowners would be really high up on their list," Wood said of the enforcing agencies. She added that she spoke only from the state water board’s perspective, and that she could not predict how counties would choose to enforce the regulations.
Threat of pollution overstimated, say officials
Homeowners are not alone in complaining of the state water board’s intransigence. Phil Smith, chief of Marin County Environmental Health Services, estimates the regulations, in their present form, would necessitate hiring 10 to 12 new employees and up to an additional $1 million a year for his department, which monitors Marin’s 9,000 septic systems.
And the vigilance demanded by the new regulations, Smith added, may be unnecessary.
"[The regulations] appear in many cases to be overprotective," he told The Light. "And that’s a strange thing for an environmental agency to say."
Randy Leach, manager of the Sonoma County Permit and Resource Management Department’s well and septic division, said that he would have to hire as many as seven new staff members to carry out the inspections mandated by the regulations. Like Smith, he believes the threat of pollution from septic systems is overestimated by the water board.
"The basic assumption that septic systems are contaminating the environment is false," Leach said at the scoping meeting.
Inspectors and realtors weigh in
Kit Rosefield of Mill Valley, a septic systems consultant currently carrying out an extensive inspection and on-site septics education program under contract with the county, told The Light that the new regulations should – but don’t – establish qualifications for septic system inspectors.
"There could be a lot of fly-by-night folks out there doing unqualified work," Rosefield said.
Several realtors also spoke up at the meeting, complaining that the regulations would slow the buying and selling of homes with bureaucratic red tape surrounding point-of-sale septic system inspections.
"I just see this as a huge quagmire at the time of sale," real estate broker Clayton Engstrom of Petaluma told The Light this week. Engstrom added that in Marin County homes are often bought before point-of-sale inspections can take place. As a result, he said, new homeowners could learn retroactively that they have to pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade their septic system under state regulations.
Health directors’ revisions one ‘alternative’
Monday night’s meeting was scheduled by the water board to solicit public comments prior to an Environmental Impact Review on the regulations.
As required by the California Environmental Quality Act, the state water board’s EIR must evaluate several alternatives to the proposed regulations. One alternative listed in an initial study published by the water board, and seemingly preferred by some present at Monday night’s meeting, would be for the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health to prepare a revised version of the regulations.
Ted Walker of the California Environmental Health Association asked that environmental health directors be given more time to develop their revised draft of the regulations, which they did not know would be considered as an alternative in the EIR until the initial study was released in June.
State water board officials did not respond to public comments at Monday night’s meeting, but assured those present that their criticisms would be taken into consideration as the EIR moves forward. The EIR is being prepared by consultants from the Sacramento office of the international design firm Edaw.
"This is just the very beginning step of a very long environmental review process," said Doda of the state water board.
Copies of the state water board’s initial study, or Notice of Preparation, can be obtained at www.waterboards.ca.gov/ab885 or by calling Todd Thompson at (916) 341-5518. Comments on the study can be sent to Thompson until August 8 at the State Water Resources Control Board Division of Water Quality, PO Box 100, Sacramento, CA 95812.