Monday, February 11, 2008

Sanitary District -- Enough Support to Continue?

e-mail, board member Charlie Stoneback, 2008.01.31:

Corey,
Last nights district meeting which included many residents within the current district boudaries begs two questions: (1) Why was the district established in the first place when there seems to be universal opposition to a sewage treatment system? (2) Is it proper to keep taking tax payer money as a public entity when the public served is in opposition to its only legal function?
While I'm a major supporter of water quality monitoring I feel we may be on shaky ground when we put sanitary district money into it. The 2007 monitoring has pretty well determined that bacteria is coming into the lake from the streams vice lake shore homes.
My first inclination is to recommend disolving the district as a taxing legal entity until such time as there is support or necessity for sewage treatment. The first step in gaining support would be a lake resident home owners association. I'm told that was tried in the past and merged into the air pump maintenance group due to lack of home owner interest, and that goup (Lake Herman Development) has very little lake resident involvement. Pressure for sewage treatment will probably come when land for development becomes costly enough to force housing density which will not support septic systems or environmental regulations make individual septic systems impractical.
Bottom line is that after the response last night I'm a little uncomfortable in maintaining the sanitary district as a taxing entity unless we can come up with a compelling rationale for existence that our tax payers will support.
What are your thoughts? Charlie

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