If It's Tuesday, It's Septic Inspections

Tonight the Bellingham County Council will revisit the revisions for inspecting septic systems.  The agenda for the meeting can be seen here.  (It's a PDF file, so you will probably have to save it and then click on it to read it).  The main point of the revisions is to permit owners to take classes and then do their own inspections.  In addition, it would require that the County set up some kind of low interest loan program for people who need repairs or replacements that they otherwise could not afford.  It also requires that any home sale include a professional inspection.

The main argument against the change is the assertion that if people do their own inspections, they have an incentive to misrepresent the outcome of their inspection.  (We might refer to this as a kind of 'original sin' argument in that we are all fallen and devious and cannot be expected to behave in a responsible way.  Although I've probably spent most of my life arguing against this kind of thinking, of the past half dozen or so years, I'm beginning to see the possible error of my ways.)  And if everybody tries to get around honest inspections, then the water quality will truly be degraded in those areas where there are septic systems.  And the degradation will flow out, so to speak, to those who have sewage systems and thus are not part of this issue.

There is some kind of legal argument, also, that assuming people have septic system problems in the absence of information to the contrary is some kind of State Constitutional violation.  But the State surely requires us to do lots of things without any evidence that we can't do them.  But I am not a lawyer.

In California, where I used to live, everybody had to have his/her automobile inspected on a regular basis to make sure that the car's smog-reduction system was working.  You were fined if you didn't have it done; and if there was a problem when it was examined, you had to pay to repair it.  The reason they did it was because of an original sin argument: people (or at least people who knew something about how to mess with the innards of a car) would cause the anti-smog mechanisms in the car to be disconnected and the only thing that would discourage that was thought to be yearly examinations, for which every car owner was charged a specific amount.  That amount was set by the state, not by the people who wanted to be smog device checkers.  If Whatcom County could just set a reasonable price for this service, they could save a lot of difficulties.  But I guess if that is not Constitutionally prohibited, it is ideologically prohibited.  Nobody's gonna tell me what I'm gonna charge!