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Wednesday, 15 August 2007 |
New local rules combine ast and present guidelines
By KAREN CAMPBELL
Staff Writer
The Auglaize County Health Board members approved a new set of local sewage rules Tuesday to provide more guidance since controversial state regulations have been rescinded.
“The rules we adopted contain some of the old rules and some of the new,” said Marvin Selhorst, director of environmental health for the Auglaize County Health Department. “We tried to incorporate both and include more definitions, to make it more livable and understandable for those who would be using it.
“We provided new information that the old rules didn’t have and outlined procedures,” he said.
Members unanimously adopted the rules on and emergency reading during the board’s regular monthly meeting. They became effective immediately, to ease what health department officials say has been a confusing situation since new state sewer regulations took effect in January.
The state regulations — pushed heavily by the Environmental Protection Agency and which many agreed, at least in part, were needed — faced controversy almost from the beginning, as systems proposed under the regulations became more costly, as much as $15,000 more than traditional systems.
The regulations also sought universal standards for a state that differs greatly in soil types and water tables, health officials said.
More than 1,200 residents of Auglaize and Mercer counties jumped on board late last year to grandfather in sewer permits under old 1977 rules county health departments had been following.
In a typical year, a couple hundred residents usually apply for the same permits. The increase left too much work to do and not enough contractors to do it, officials said.
Only two sewer permits were issued under the new regulations this year before the rules were rescinded. With the high numbers of permits issued last year, health department officials said they hadn’t expected to see many more this year.
But along with the withdrawal of the new regulations came the need to establish some sort of standards health departments would hold residents to. The Ohio Public Health Council in July adopted an interim set of rules that serve as minimum standards across the state until a new set of state regulations are proposed in 2009, but many counties felt responsible for doing more.
Some referred back to the old 1977 rules meant to be replaced by the new regulations. Others used virtually everything in the rescinded regulations as their rules.
Local health department officials saw some necessity in the new regulations to keep up with changes in technology and environmental concerns, yet liked portions of the rules the department had followed for 30 years, and pieced parts of the rules together to develop their own set to follow during the interim.
“We can actually kind of pick and choose what works for us and what we want to use,” Selhorst said. “I definitely had problems with the new rules. I’m glad we have a little more of our own rule making authority.”
Auglaize County Health Board Director Charlotte Parsons said if they had not found their own solutions to meeting needs and maintaining accountability, they would have been issuing permits with essentially no rules to enforce them.
Several area counties, including Auglaize, Allen, Van Wert, Shelby and Mercer, joined together to develop a basic outline for how they wanted their rules to read. Some counties used more specific wording than others, but they all came up with answers to questions they felt needed addressed while counties wait for the state to develop a more user-friendly, realistic set of rules.
Selhorst said the biggest dilemma that needed addressed in most counties was how far of a vertical isolation distance there should be between the surface where wastewater is applied to the soil and the seasonal high water table. The old requirement was 4 feet. Auglaize County is requiring a 1-foot distance.
In July, board members approved that part of the rules, as well as bonding or insurance requirements of $25,000 for home sewage system installers and service providers, and $10,000 for septic haulers — an amount that the state had set at $25,000.
“There’s still a lot of confusion,” Selhorst said. “With the new rules rescinded, no one’s sure what to do. A couple people were in wanting to build houses. They think they can do it in two weeks. You can’t do that anymore. It can take several weeks to a couple months at least now. The state still won’t allow them to put an old type of system in.
“It’s still a learning process to see what types can be allowed and who can install them,” he said. “They have to wait to fit in a busy soil scientist’s schedule. It’s a learning process for everyone, including us, the designers, the installers and the builders. I’ve had contractors call afraid to bid on projects, but they are going to have to do it sooner or later.”
According to a recent study by The Ohio State University, some sort of updated regulations are needed as almost 30 percent of Ohio’s 1 million septic systems are malfunctioning, dumping untreated human waste into waterways, contaminating drinking water sources and harming wildlife.
But at this point, there still isn’t one easy solution. Even if the state adopts new regulations in 2009, it would take at least five years of a unified set of rules before people would start to understand it, Selhorst said.
In the meantime, health department officials said as they continue to go about implementing their own rules, they may hold conferences for installers to get everyone started on the same page.
While the state continues to look at a number of possible sewer system options, Selhorst said they still are overlooking the most obvious — off-lot.
“The state’s big concern is not going off-lot, but we have the technology to treat the effluent and in some cases that is the best solution,” Selhorst said. “I don’t see what the big issue is if we can treat it.”
“Everybody’s not going to be happy no matter what happens,” Selhorst said. “What the Ohio Department of Health and state legislature will come up with by July 2009 is anyone’s guess. I suppose in the next few years we’ll find out what works and what doesn’t and go from there.” |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 16 August 2007 )
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