Data complete for new county sewage system inspection program

By Randa Wagner -

The pro­posed pro­gram for house­hold sewage inspec­tions in Mor­row County is nearly complete.

Envi­ron­men­tal Health Direc­tor Brian Benick spent two years putting together a data­base that includes every prop­erty that has a sewage sys­tem in Mor­row County.

“I cre­ated a file for every home in this county,” Benick said. “We matched up all our old records, too.”

Over half of Mor­row County’s 10,293 house­hold sewage sys­tems are older than 25 years, which is the aver­age life-span for a house­hold sewage sys­tem. Cur­rently, all house­hold sewage treat­ment sys­tems with mechan­i­cal com­po­nents (aer­a­tion sys­tems) are inspected yearly, a require­ment since 1989. The pro­posed rule changes state sys­tems with­out mechan­i­cal com­po­nents (non-mechanical) will be required to have an inspec­tion once every ten years.

The ques­tion is not so much ‘is the sys­tem up to code’ as it is ‘is the sys­tem cre­at­ing a pub­lic nui­sance?’ Benick explained. Does it smell bad, look bad, is there black water ooz­ing from the ground’s surface?

“We’re not going after sys­tems because they are old,” Ben­nick said, “only if they’re cre­at­ing a prob­lem or in a state of failure.”

He added this also applies to the Amish.

“They will be sub­ject to the inspec­tion as well; we have author­ity for priv­ies,” Benick said. “When an Amish fam­ily puts in a leach­ing privy which is, basi­cally, a hole, you can’t do that. When we find that, we will be requir­ing them to put in a vault privy because that (a hole), in itself, is a nuisance.”

“I think they’re going to be very unhappy with the state rules,” Health Com­mis­sioner Angela Smith said.

Ben­nick noted some Amish houses have been built over the last 10–20 years that have never obtained a per­mit for a sewage system.

“They have no legal privy,” Benick said. “You have to have a vault privy, you have to hold it, con­tain it’ you can’t just put it in a hole.”

Smith explained it will take ten years to com­plete all the inspec­tions, so they have divided the data­base up equally into tenths, ran­domly select­ing homes rather than doing whole town­ships at a time. Since prop­erty own­ers do not know when their inspec­tion will be, they can take steps to pre­pare ahead to make sure their sys­tem is in good workign order.

“If they cur­rently have a con­tract for ser­vice, they can have their tanks pumped and include an inspec­tion. Then they can pro­vide the inspec­tion report to the Health Depart­ment.,” she said. She expects some back­lash, and noth­ing about the pro­gram is designed to be puni­tive. The inspec­tors, she main­tained, intend to be as acco­mo­dat­ing and help­ful in the process as is pos­si­ble under the law.

“We’re going out on a limb a bit to try to pro­vide and man­age grants that can pro­vide assis­tance to folks who can’t afford to com­ply,” Smith stressed. One chal­lenge is the ‘men­tal­ity’ that a sewage sys­tem is a one-time expense for a home, but it’s not going to last forever.

There’s mainen­tance and upkeep and expense asso­ci­ated with homes, Smith said, and when it comes to improve­ments, peo­ple think of tan­gi­ble updates like new dri­ve­ways, room addi­tions or heat­ing sys­tems. Peo­ple don’t think about their sewage sys­tems until they stop working.

“They just want the sewage to ‘go away,’ Smith said. “They don’t think about, ‘there are things I have to do every year,’ and what will extend or shorten the life of the sys­tem. They don’t want to think about it and they sure don’t want to invest in it.”

A per­son who lives within vil­lage lim­its pays a monthly fee for their sewage ser­vice, Smith said. The sys­tem has to be main­tained, and it’s the same con­cept with a rural sep­tic system.

“It’s just not some­thing folks have been forced to rec­on­cile with on a house­hold sewage sys­tem,” she noted. “No one wants their house­hold sewage sys­tem reg­u­lated, but every­body wants their neighbor’s house­hold sewage sys­tem regulated.”

The Health Dept. is work­ing on get­ting over $400,000 in fund­ing this year to help peo­ple who can’t afford [to get their sys­tems repaired]. Smith insisted they will always look for the least expen­sive ‘fix’ for a prop­erty owner to put the sys­tem back in operation.

“Our goal is to get failed sys­tems replaced with a work­ing sys­tem over a period of time,” Ben­nick said. Mor­row County is unique in that we’re at the head­wa­ters of every stream in the [area]. It’s very sen­sitve because all our waste goes some­where else.”

Smith and Ben­nick plan to hold edu­ca­tional meet­ings with at town­ship meet­ings and other venues.

The Mor­row County Health Department’s web­site www.morrowcountyhealth.org con­tains the com­plete House­hold Sewage Dis­posal Reg­u­la­tions and the Ohio Depart­ment Of Health’s Sewage Treat­ment Sys­tem Rules. These doc­u­ments can be viewed at any time and include descrip­tions of ter­mi­nol­ogy and the Ohio Revised Code that sup­ports the rules.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.