Civic Matters (and a Little Weather)

Yesterday, it was supposed to be rainy, but the late morning was pretty sunny, with big blue sky and big puffy white cloud.  And it was even pretty warm, relative to November and all that.  I came back from cross the border around 2 p.m. and suggested to Ed that we put the tree sweaters on the first two trees.  (There is about 35 meters of tree sweater currently waiting to be mounted upon the dogwood and maple tree.)  But I had a couple of other things to do, so he went up on the roof to sweep leaves, while I did the dishes.  And then, ten minutes later, it started raining hard.  I went outside and saw that the sky was very dark, overwhelmingly dark, and while I stood there, I saw a flash of lightning, quickly followed by thunder.  Ed came down off the roof, we went indoors, and the rain poured down and the thunder and lightning continued close by for maybe five minutes.  And then, out of the sky, but of course it felt like out of nowhere, big balls of hail started pouring down, quickly covering the porch and all the pathways.  Five minutes maybe, maybe more.  And then for the rest of the day, it was very, very cold outside.  I guess you drop a ton or so of ice in your yard, it chills everything down quite a bit.  A surprising day.  [Another view of how winter is coming at us here.]  [This is Ed's photo, not mine, though.]

Then, today, I went to the library, partly to do my tidying work on the magazine exchange cart.  Sadly, I found five catalogs (as compared to three last Saturday), and probably a dozen pieces of travel literature (clearly not magazines under the definition I’d think we’d be using).  I confiscated the catalogues and some of the travel literature that was clearly just commercial stuff.  But I’m open to ideas of how to communicate to magazine exchangers what we ought to be aiming for in order not to have this become overflowing with stuff that nobody wants.

Finally, this coming Monday, a couple of County Very Important People are coming up to hear us or probably for us to hear them talk about the septic system inspection program.  (Community Center, 7 p.m.)  The town is rife with various rumors about how this program is being conducted, mostly involving favoritism for low-standard inspections by the commercial inspectors.  The County’s failure to set fee standards/ranges makes this an almost inevitable rumor, of course.  Washington doesn’t have car inspections like many states do, so maybe this is how it learns the hard way how to do mandatory inspections.  It does seem like it would be obvious that you’d want to eliminate or at least minimize the obvious conflicts of interest.

The Taxpayers Association has come up with a list of questions that they have sent to the County Councilwoman and County Counsel person in hopes that they will have some answers.  Mark Robbins, who is heading up the TA right now, put together the list from a member discussion last week and I suggested to him that it might be useful to get the questions out to the public ahead of time, as well.  So here they are:

1.  Not enough time given to property owners.  Need blanket extension (not consideration of individual requests.  NB:  The notification by the Health Department was issued in October, a few weeks after most of the many part-time residents had already closed up their summer cottages for the winter.
2.  Annual inspections are too frequent and unnecessarily burdensome.
3.  The inspection  regime is not calibrated to usage or presence of inhabitants.
4.  There  may be conflicts of interest in requiring inspections by private inspectors, some of whom may be contractors with an interest in making repairs or replacing septic systems.  The County employs inspectors for other purposes; why not for septic system?
5.  If the system is to depend on private inspectors, the County should regulate the allowable fee schedule for inspections.
6.  Couldn’t older systems be grandfathered in, at least to some degree related to usage and severity of the deficiency?
7.  Isn’t it way past due to think about innovations that would reduce demand on septic systems, including composting toilets (are these allowed in Whatcom County?) and gray water systems?
8.  County ordinances and health regulations that, if really unavoidable, will require huge capital expenditures by property owners for new, above ground septic systems, ought not to be imposed prior to establishing a fund or mechanism for low interest loans and assistance to people who cannot afford the repairs that will be necessary to remain in their homes.  If there is a real environmental and public health problem, it has developed over decades; so why does it have to be fixed in months?
 9.  What is the experience of other Washington counties in meeting the state mandate on sanitary septic systems?
10. Can the county help Point Roberts (and similar unincorporated communities) to analyze the costs and benefits of endless individual investments in inspections and repairs vs community investment in a sewage and treatment system?

If we got answers/explanations from our visitors on all ten of those, I’d be impressed, but we can at least hope they will come prepared to address our concerns and not just to announce the wisdom of their previous actions.  A good turnout would be helpful.