Lake Herman Sanitary District: Inspect Your Septic Systems!

I've just posted a recap of the discussion we had at last night's Lake Herman Sanitary District meeting about starting a septic tank inspection regime. No new ordinances yet -- first we want to get information from our local septic tank installers and from the DENR about good criteria for inspecting and maintaining tanks. We'll talk more about that at our April 23 meeting.

Now I'd rather not have the sanitary district imposing a lot of rules and expenses on my neighbors and me, and as a board member, I've tried to avoid exactly that. I've cut the budget and made clear my opposition to building an expensive central sewer system around the lake. But regular inspections of every tank in the district could be a good idea from a number of perspectives:

1. From a water quality perspective, regular inspections are a good idea, as they'll reveal malfunctioning systems and help us take action to replace them.
   
2. From a management perspective, required inspections will give the sanitary district a good picture of just how many and what type of systems we have. I'm embarrassed to say so, but our district files have specs for maybe a quarter of the onsite wastewater systems in our jurisdiction. We don't know exactly what some folks have under their yards... and some homeowners may not know, either.
3. From a policy-making perspective, an inspection regime will provide solid information on existing systems and give us a good idea of whether we need to replace them with a central sewer system. If we do inspections and find most systems are hunky-dory, we can concentrate on getting homeowners to upgrade the few that aren't up to par. If we find endemic problems, we'll have hard evidence to justify a push for community system. Either way, we'll be making decisions based on solid information, not wonderings and wishes.

As I said, next meeting is April 23 (6:30 p.m., Madison Public Library). There's nothing more fun than talking sewage, so mark your calendars and drop in!