Last August, I got my postcard reminding me to have my septic tank checked to see if it needs pumping. It’s already March, and I haven’t followed through. That’s because I want to personally check the sludge levels in my tank before I make the call.

Last year, I removed the dirt from on top of the tank, so I don’t have to dig anymore, but I covered it with filter fabric, wood chips and planter pots for a kind of patio effect.

Moving full pots, a layer of chips and rolling back the filter fabric is more of a pain than the shovel. I have to rethink this; my tank needs to be more accessible, but I’m going to check it this week, for sure.

Septics are on my mind because the Groundwater Protection Committee, of which I’m a member, and the Water Purveyors Association teamed up to obtain funding to continue to provide a variety of educational forums designed to help protect our groundwater and drinking water sources.

We will again offer some of the popular workshops on septic system maintenance (see sidebar), maybe even stretching a bit to look at alternative systems.

We’ll also provide educational opportunities for livestock owners and drinking water purveyors.

We’ll be working with the Horse Owners Association, the Vashon Park District and the King Conservation District (KCD) to build a manure storage facility at the equestrian park at Paradise Ridge to keep rainwater from possibly leaching nitrates and other contaminants into our drinking water.

There’s not a huge amount of manure generated at the equestrian park, but we hope to inspire livestock owners to build manure composting/storage facilities at their own places. The KCD will offer their four-session Livestock Management Series in the fall, focusing on both the health of animals and the environment.

Since there are only about 1,000 private wells on the Island and there are over 4,000 households, chances are you get your water from a public water system.

I interviewed representatives of 22 public water systems on the Island last year.

Managers of both large and small systems said they need technical assistance to identify strategies to protect their water sources.

Many of the systems own little land around their water sources, and most do not have protective covenants that would limit activities, even within a 100 foot radius, around their sources.

While the larger systems are required to have professional certified operators, many of our small water systems are managed by volunteers. They would like a better understanding of their regulatory responsibilities and help developing effective policies and procedures to deal with system users.

What recourse do you have if one member of a neighborhood water association continually leaves the hose on, running the well dry? Or, stacks cans of paint and solvents just uphill of your community well?

Evergreen Rural Water of Washington and local experts will offer a series of workshops for volunteer water system managers, boards of directors and system owners to address some of these issues.

These educational forums are supported by a King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, Land and Water Resources Division, Waterworks grant.

Mark Allen, of King County Environmental Health, is in the process of helping rewrite Title 13, the codes that govern on-site sewage disposal.

Some of the proposed changes are likely to make it easier to repair failing systems so that we get better wastewater treatment on these sites, maybe not perfect, but better. It will also be easier for the county to accept newer state-approved technologies.

The proposed code requires a licensed inspector to evaluate and report on the condition of the on-site system when a home goes on the market. If there are no as-built drawings, they will have to record what’s in the ground and evaluate how well it’s working. It’s not clear exactly how this would be accomplished, but I expect there will be a whole lot of digging going on.

Allen acknowledges that data management is a huge challenge for Environmental Health. They are modernizing their filing system. Old records have been digitized, but still need to be indexed to a parcel number and permit number so that they can be electronically retrieved. It seems to me that staffing is, and will continue to be a major issue for Environmental Health, particularly if they are to manage and use all the new data generated by licensed inspectors.

Jim Simmonds, of King County Department of Natural Resources, reported very low oxygen levels in Quartermaster Harbor last summer; so low that we were closing in on possibly witnessing fish kills.

Oxygen is consumed as phytoplankton dies and decays. The phytoplankton blooms are controlled by water temperature and the availability of nitrogen.

Simmonds’ group has recently applied for a grant to evaluate nitrogen flow into Quartermaster Harbor and to assess the relative input from various sources such as septics, manure, alder forests, nutrient-rich ocean water, fertilizers, etc.

This project is an opportunity for science to inform public policy; it can help us focus our energies. I hope it gets funded. What we do on land to help Quartermaster, will likely help protect our other water resources, too.

— Susie Kalhorn is a member of the Groundwater Protection Committee of Vashon-Maury Island Community Council.