PORT ANGELES — Clallam County will move slowly toward overseeing where and how water wells are drilled, with an eye to keeping them far from septic tanks, county commissioners decided Monday.
Commissioner Steve Tharinger, D-Dungeness, and Environmental Health Director Andy Brastad will collaborate on the project under which the county would assume a role currently held by the state Department of Ecology.
Ecology employs but one person to inspect new and decommissioned wells in a 13-county area that includes the North Olympic Peninsula. Clallam County would employ an inspector to examine at least half of new wells and all the decommissioned ones.
New wells are expected to average 300 per year, Brastad said. Decommissionings would average about 25.
Ecology would reimburse Clallam County only half the fees the state collects from drillers — about $30,000 a year, less than an inspector’s wages and benefits — so the county probably would add a surcharge, he said.
A comparable program in Jefferson County charges an extra $132 for each new well. Tharinger emphasized such an increase wouldn’t be just another fee with which to burden drillers.
“It needs to be revenue neutral,” he said Monday at the commissioners’ weekly work session.
“There has to be a fee to cover the costs, and there has to be value added to justify the fee.”
100 feet apart
That value would be keeping wells and septic systems at least 100 feet apart.
Sometimes a homeowner discovers that a neighbor has installed a septic system so close to the property line that the homeowner has no place to drill a well — or vice versa.
The program also would insure that well seals were installed properly and decommissionings were performed properly, according to county hydrologist Ann Soule.
Ecology wants to pass the program on to counties, and the plan for Water Resource Inventory Area 18 — the Elwha and Dungeness watersheds — also recommended that Clallam County assume the inspections.
“The key message should be: ‘Permit first, drill second,”‘ the WRIA 18 plan said.
