The County Cracks Down With New Standards

When Sarah went to the local county building department she was told that before she could obtain a building permit our water district had to install a new system which would cost every homeowner thousands of dollars. This was good news since the septic permit that had already been granted was only good for nine more months before they also upped the requirements for septic systems, and then we'd have to start all over.

Most of the smaller islands around here had been used primarily as summer colonies, so no one had given much thought to water standards. There were separate little groups of houses that together formed their own water districts and pooled the water from one large well, and it was a helter skelter type of organization. But now that people were starting to move onto the islands full time it was becoming obvious that new standards would have to be established and enforced.

We started out by meeting with the residents of our water district, a group of 12 families scattered in the immediate area. But it soon became obvious that it was not in their interest to conform to the new standards. They were getting along fine as it was. I couldn't blame them, really. Here we were, new people and all of a sudden the state decides no one can build a new house without the whole water district being subject to upgrading. We discussed it with Sarah and she suggested we drill our own well, and while this added costs we hadn't anticipated, we had little choice if we wanted everything to go according to schedule.

Some of our neighbors were none too happy with our decision to drill our own well. They felt the water table might be affected. Perhaps they felt if they dragged their feet we'd get fed up and leave. Sort of like "if you don't think about it it'll go away". When we didn't someone filed a complaint with the health department stating our well was too close to our septic drain field. This only caused hard feelings, for Sarah had obtained health department approval before giving the go-ahead to the well driller.