CA Assembly bill 885 Septic tank and well testing/monitoring

[hikerduane]

Financial and record keeping burden for private property owners in CA. Cookie cutter approach. Even the local Air/Water Quality guy is not happy with this new law. Testing of water wells every five years, inspection of solids in your septic tank every five years at a cost of $325 each. Affects business owners too who have septic systems and wells. My neighbor who has a small store by me, brought this to my attention. Also affects undeveloped property, you would have to have enough space to have a proper leach field. Meetings are scheduled around the state, eleven in all, the nearest to me is over an hour and a half away. Also, if your septic system is contributing to the degradation of surface water that is already impaired and is within 600', you have to do a retrofit for supplemental treatment, for $45,000, only $35,000 if new construction. I have a creek running thru my property. I need to check out which waters are impaired.

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_iss ... tic_tanks/ click on State Water Resources Board, go down to Q & A line.

[Bad Man From Bodie]

Yep.....this is just the beginning!!! Job security for water/septic samplers. I think the $325 is just the cost for the analysis though. The hidden cost will be occurred with the samplers, unless the feds are going to do the sampling. If that's the case, that's a lot of sampling and its going to bog down Cal WQCB. They will have to hire hundreds of techs to do the sampling, and who is going to keep track of the data, quality assurance, and corrective actions? Wont happen, it will all have to be contracted out 3rd party at the home/business owners expense.

Samplers are anywhere from $50 to $120/hr. Hopefully your sampling goes quickly and you don't have receiving waters issues with your septic. If you do, hopefully your water quality meets drinking water standards at the point it leaves your property. If the states says you are contributing to degradation of a receiving waters it will be up to you to fix your septic and remediate , or prove otherwise at your expense. What will be interesting is if they make people monitor outside their leach areas if you have impaired waters within the 600' radius$$$$$$$$$$$$(monitoring wells aren't cheep).

[hikerduane]

I haven't heard anything bad about the creek going thru my place, luckily. Monitoring wells, won't be $16 a foot like when my well was drilled in '81. No policing of this to insure people are complying, but, if someone is in the know, there is supposed to be records when property is sold. The way I am going, they will bury me there so I won't have to worry about passing on any records.