In an effort to solve drainage troubles on Bolinas' Big Mesa, a committee of Bolinas Public Utility District next month may propose forming a special district that could levy taxes to pay for a solution.
A major aim of the plan to would be remove the mesa from the jurisdiction of the Marin Environmental Health Department. The move could give mesa residents more flexibility in choosing how to get rid of household sewage, which could save them lots of money.
In wet months, soil on the mesa becomes saturated, causing some septic systems to fail and sewage to rise the surface.
Under the county's "design standard," new septic systems must be at least three feet above ground water. However, if drainage could be improved so the ground water table no longer rises as high, BPUD directors would instead use a "performance standard" for new septic systems.
Under this standard, any system that works properly would be allowed, regardless of the depth of the leach lines.
"You can still get [a system] working without it being three feet above ground water," said BPUD Director Vic Amoroso.
Although officials at Environmental Health and the Regional Water Quality Control Board have expressed support for establishing a special district, the trick will be persuading mesa residents that a new tax would be worthwhile in the long run.
"We'll attempt to bring together as many of the problems peculiar to the mesa as we can under the obvious political constraints," said Jack McClellan, a BPUD director and a member of the special committee.
One constraint that worries McClellan and Amoroso is the statewide passage this month of Proposition 218, which will require special districts to get two-thirds majority approval before levying new assessments. Amoroso guessed the annual tax might be about $200.
"It's a big tax squeeze," McClellan said. "These local agencies are the one level of government that [a simple majority of] people still have control over." Under Prop. 218, he added, "a one-third minority is in a position to veto anything."
Amoroso doesn't like the odds: "I don't think there's much of a possibility to get two-thirds of the people in the septic district" to vote for a new tax. He said there might be too many people on the mesa who have functioning, legal septic systems and who might not want to subsidize a neighbor's substandard system.
There may be one way around the problem, Amoroso said. "It's conceivable that we would form a district with the understanding that the only money we would spend would be grant money."
Forming a district without imposing a new tax would not require a vote, he noted, and grant money has been available in the past.
Some $7.5 million in grant money was available in 1989 for the so-called "Questa Project," a proposal to fix the drainage problems. That plan was scrapped as "brainless," Amoroso said.
Bolinas might also be eligible for government funds, he said, because it was county officials who allowed too many septic systems to be built on the mesa. The county's own studies have shown that the mesa's geology can't support the roughly 370 septic systems that have been installed.
"Bolinas has always been against overbuilding the mesa," Amoroso noted.
In 1987, Regional Water Quality Control Board became aware of fecal coliform bacteria in Alder Creek and roadside ditches. In response, the county ordered septic systems inspections for any mesa homeowner making home improvements of any kind
To meet the county stringent health codes, people have had to install above-ground systems that cost upwards of $30,000, which McClellan called "too expensive."
McClellan wants regulators to let Bolinas pursue alternative forms of sewage disposal. "We're in a good position to take the lead," he said. "We've been dealing with this problem for 20 years"
Allowing liberal use of gray-water systems and composting toilets would go a long way toward conserving precious drinking water, he said. Now, he explained, "it's our drinking water that we use to move s**t around. It's an absurd idea, yet we still do it."