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Zoning committee debates holding tank policy; staff recommends keeping 'system of choice' with stronger pumper requirements
Summary
County sanitarian Eric Wellow told the committee Sawyer County historically has 15–20% holding tanks and proposed keeping 'system of choice' while placing greater enforcement and notarized servicing requirements on pumpers; some members and a public commenter urged treating holding tanks as a 'last resort.'
Sawyer County's zoning committee spent a substantial portion of its meeting discussing whether to change county policy on septic holding tanks, with staff recommending the county keep a "system of choice" approach while strengthening requirements for pumpers and plumbers.
Eric Wellow, the county sanitarian, summarized approaches used by neighboring counties and technical constraints that can make conventional or mound systems infeasible on small, lakefront lots. Wellow said Sawyer County has maintained between 15% and 20% holding tanks over the last few decades and estimated that "18% equivalates to about 60 holding tanks annually." He noted holding tanks carry recurring pumping costs and described staff proposals to require notarized servicing agreements from pumpers and to place more onus on pumpers and plumbers to establish realistic maintenance schedules.
Some committee members and a public commenter took a different view. Committee member Jenny said she has learned "so much about septic systems" from prior work on a tourist-rooming ordinance and urged the committee to consider moving toward a "system of last resort" and to have the committee review exceptions rather than leaving decisions solely to department-level approvals. She said the committee is the appropriate place to decide exceptions because of water-quality concerns.
Staff cautioned that a switch to a "last resort" policy would require clearly defined triggers (soil depth, area limits and other quantifiers), could increase the committee's caseload substantially (Wellow said the county sees roughly 60 new holding tanks a year at current rates), and would impose additional staff workload. Several members said they preferred keeping the current policy for now but asked staff to draft stronger contractual and enforcement language for pumpers and to monitor the issue.
No ordinance change was adopted at the meeting; the committee asked staff to prepare options and stronger pumper/plumber requirements for future consideration.
