November 7, 2010

A Septic System at the Crossroads

By Roland Toy
The county building department inspector and I were finally standing on the sand next to a hole the size and shape of a vertical grave. According to his business card, young Craig (so we'll call him) was a deputy sanitarian. He was there to approve the hole for a percolation test. If, after 48 hours of a continuous trickle from a hose, no standing water were visible in the hole, the county would approve a septic system, and I could get on with building my family's house.I was thinking "bless deputy sanitarians everywhere" for the same reason people say "thank God for aspirin" after a headache goes away. The percolation test was going to be a formality. The building site was on a sand dune hundreds of feet deep, near the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. Even if the trickle lasted a century, there would be no standing water in the hole. The building department had run out of reasons to obstruct my project.A hundred and thirty-three days earlier, I had submitted...(Read Full Article)