Septic System Meeting, Part II

The back story to the septic inspection program is this.  The State put forth a requirement that septic systems needed to be inspected annually.  They didn’t say how those inspections were to be done.  They want them done to improve/protect water quality in Puget Sound.  The counties were each responsible for implementing this requirement.  In Whatcom County, there was a division on the Council as to whether inspections should be done professionally or by homeowners themselves.  Brenner (who was at the meeting Monday night) favored the homeowners being allowed to do it themselves; Weimer (also at the meeting) thought that at least the initial inspection should be done by professionals. We know who won.

There are 30,000 septic systems in Whatcom County but, according to Weimer, they don’t know where 10,000 of them are.   I think what he meant by that is that they don’t know anything about the kind of septic system that is in place in 10,000 property parcels.  Having a professional do the first inspection, he said, would provide the County with a data base.  The reason they don’t know anything about these 10K is that until sometime in the 60’s  (don’t have a note on the exact date, so I’m working from memory), you didn’t need a septic system permit.  Whatever system was put in prior to that time was legal, but there were no standards.  You’d could have been using a ’36 Ford for a tank.  Then, sometime later (1975? 1976?), Bellingham had a flood and a lot of records were lost, including existing records about septic systems.  So those two would presumably account for their not knowing about 10,000 septic systems.

The obvious question is why are we choosing between professional inspections and homeowner inspections?  Why aren’t we using county inspectors, in the same way that we have county building inspectors?  The short answer is ‘no money.’  And the longer answer—reading between the lines of their comments somewhat--is that, in order to get enough money, you’d have to raise taxes, and they’re not going to do that because, well you know why they’re not going to raise taxes.  So this is yet another example of services that would probably be better done by government (because there is less conflict of interest) but have been privatized because some elected officials prefer privatization and because some elected officials are unwilling officially to suggest raising taxes.  And they don’t want to do it because they fear they’ll be punished by the electorate at election time.   And much of the electorate wants services but doesn’t want to pay for them; but much of that portion of the electorate being required to have this service didn’t actually initiate any request for the service.  It’s an understandably messy political problem in a tight budget period.

The standards for the inspections appear to be somewhat unclear, leading to uneven outcomes.  The initial failure rate of the inspection regimen in Whatcom County is either 3-4% (Brenner’s figure) or 4-5% (Weimer’s figure).  Both said they got their numbers from the Health Dept. (It did not appear to me that the Council and the Health Department (which operates under Kremens) were happily working together on this problem.) In Kitsap County, by contrast, the initial failure rate is 1%.  There might be some reason for that, but nobody had one on offer.  The implication was that different counties and different inspectors might well be using somewhat different standards.  For example, according to Brenner, any system that is not failing is acceptable, even if it requires maintenance; but some people at the meeting had been told that some systems (wooden boxes commonly used historically) are on the face of it unacceptable and therefore considered to be failing merely by existing.  That is, that they didn’t even need to be inspected beyond that fact that they are a currently unacceptable system. 

The most irritating (for me) part of the discussion was Weimer’s insistence on describing private inspectors who are in the building trades--specifically in the installation and repair of septic systems—as having a ‘potential conflict of interest.’  Of course they have a clear and present conflict of interest.  They may be able to steer a careful path around that conflict, but neither the public nor the county has any way of knowing whether they are doing so.  The inspection system appears to have no transparency as far as I could determine.  And the people from Point Roberts at the meeting were outspoken about their fears of conflict of interest: both under-inspecting for friends and relatives and over-inspecting in order to generate more business for the inspectors themselves and their colleagues.

Bottom line: There’s a lot of money at stake in these 30,000 inspections, all of which are to take place within a year. Replacing tanks was discussed at some length because new tanks cost about $1500, but Whatcom County charges $950 for a permit to install a new tank.  Maybe in the situation where the County is requiring a new tank, that permit fee ought to be eliminated?  But the County needs money, so I doubt if that is going to happen.  (If 4% of systems are failing and need new tanks, that’s $1.25 million in permit money to the County, and almost $2 million to the septic tank replacement business.)  The inspectors are getting about $200-$250 per inspection, of which $35 goes to the County (but which we would never refer to as a tax).  So the County nets $1 million plus on the permits, and the inspectors net $5.7 million on the inspections.  And then you have to include also all the additional costs rising from the inspections, money going to those building trades.  In an initial study, the County found that 20% of the systems inspected required maintenance work of some kind. The millions keep rolling by.

Final info: the classes so that homeowners can, if they choose, do their own inspections after the first inspection, have been slow to start.  Currently, the only classes are for above ground systems (pump? Pressure mound? I know little about the different kinds).  Eventually there will be classes for the gravity systems, which continue to be acceptable systems, per se.  Classes will probably be offered in Point Roberts itself.  And if you do not long to do your own inspections, you can hire certified inspectors.   And the Health Dept. is said to be doing random inspections on the inspectors’ inspections.  But who will be inspecting the Health Department’s inspectors’ inspections of the certified inspectors’ inspections?  We’ll need another meeting to get that nailed down.