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Resident urges action on septic certification fees; county policy subcommittee to refine reforms
Summary
A Thurston County resident told the board the current septic certification fee structure burdens a subset of property owners and said promised reforms had not reached residents; policy subcommittee members said staff will prepare proposals for possible expansion or restructuring of fees.
At the public-comment portion of the Feb. 11 Thurston County Board of Health meeting, resident Sue Koffel raised concerns about on‑site sewage (septic) certification fees and asked whether a county proposal to reform billing had been advanced as previously promised.
Koffel said she received an operational-certificate invoice in 2024 and that the fee had increased from $170 in 2024 to $180 this year. She told the board the county’s program description (as included with the invoice) states the program manages more than 70,000 septic systems; Koffel said only a fraction of system owners receive certification bills and that owners of certain, higher‑cost systems frequently are charged while others are not. Koffel said her system requires professional inspections twice a year at a personal cost she estimated at about $500 annually.
Koffel said she received an email in February 2024 stating the county intended to propose reforms to the septic operations and maintenance billing system but that, a year later, she had seen no substantive change and had received a new invoice. She asked whether a proposal had been advanced and whether billing would be made more equitable.
Staff responded from the dais, asking Koffel to provide contact information so the assistant county manager and environmental-health staff could follow up. During later committee updates, members of the policy subcommittee discussed septic-program reform as a leading candidate for policy work in 2025. Subcommittee members and staff said county fees currently apply to defined system types and areas (for example, systems in certain protection districts and complex systems) and that staff will prepare more specific proposals recommending where and how fees might be expanded or restructured; no change was adopted at the meeting.
The board did not vote on a policy change; staff and the policy subcommittee said they would return to the board with additional details for further consideration.
