Officials in northwest Wisconsin's Douglas County thought it would be easy to adopt new septic system regulations. Instead they ran into a hornet's nest of resistance. Wisconsin's new septic rules were supposed to make it easier to build private wastewater systems, but in far Northwestern Wisconsin, they seemed to irritate almost everybody.

	It takes a big hole to bury a septic tank. (MPR Photo/Bob Kelleher)

There's an expensive project underway at a fashionable lakefront home in Wisconsin's Douglas County. A yellow excavator is taking bites from the lush green lawn. A flatbed truck idles nearby. It's carrying the soon-to-be-buried concrete septic tank.

"This is a two-bedroom system," according to John Solofra, the septic expert for Bergeman Plumbing in Gordon, Wisc. This job is going well. He says it's a replacement system that will cost "roughly about $3,500."

That's about the price of a good, used car, but put the same tank in a yard about 30 miles north and it'll cost as much as a new car. The red clay near Lake Superior requires a mound system, where the drainfield is buried in a mound right in the yard.

"Anywhere from $9,000 to $12,000 on the high end, on a three- bedroom mound system," he says.

	The new septic tank swings into place. (MPR photo/Bob Kelleher)

That's a pretty heavy expense in a county that's largely rural and low income. A new septic system is simply beyond some families means. But failing systems are just plain nasty and dangerous. They can contaminate surface water or the underground water table tapped for drinking water.

Solofra explains, "When you have a failing system, it's running down the hill into a lake or a stream, running downstream to the neighbors, and their kids and dogs are playing in the stream. That is where the problem is."

Wisconsin's new septic regulations -- dubbed "Comm 83" -- are supposed to make it easier to build new homes on marginal land. Comm 83 permits new kinds of systems, and allows options like holding tanks where septics don't work.

"When you have a failing system, it's running down the hill into a lake or a stream, running downstream to the neighbors, and their kids and dogs are playing in the stream." - John Solofra, septic installer

But the rules also require regular inspections. Failed systems would quickly come to official attention. When Douglas County tried last year to adopt the new state rules, county residents raised a major stink.

"Most of us, and my neighbors, we're just living day by day, paying our bills, and paying our taxes," says Terese Hooper, who represents Parkland Township, just outside Superior."And I don't think we can afford it."

You might say Parkland's problems go back 10,000 years. Its modest homes are spread through sparse forest, rooted in a plain of sticky red clay. It was once the bottom of a much larger sized Lake Superior. Septic systems are designed to trickle into the soil, but in Parkland wastewater pools on the clay. Hooper worries about the toilet police. Will inspections force residents to make repairs they can't afford?

"We all try to do our best," Hooper explains. "We all want to follow the law. We want to keep the environment clean. We're not against the environment. But," she asks, "where do you think the money's coming from?"

"Most of us, and my neighbors, we're just living day by day, paying our bills, and paying our taxes. And, I don't think we can afford it. " - Terese Hooper, Parkland Township,

The worry may be over money, but the argument's over rights. Residents resent mandatory inspections when there's no outward sign that a septic system isn't working. That, Hooper says, is a violation of property rights.

"We're losing our rights; completely losing our rights. We're the government. We pay the taxes. We do everything that's possible to be a good citizen, and then they come and infringe with all these mandates. When mandates come," she says, "they should come with money."

That's the argument hundreds of residents made at a public hearing last November. It was a shout-fest, with state and county officials badly outnumbered.

But property rights go two ways, according to Fred Anderson. His property is on Whitefish Lake, a relatively clean, natural Lake in Southern Douglas County.

"You have to reach a balance between the rights and responsibilities. If we ignore our responsibility to take care of the environment, then the community is going to be the loser," he says.

Southern Douglas County is lake country. The St. Croix River starts here. Fred Anderson wants to protect the lakes. He says the price of protection isn't too high.

"Some of these septic systems are 50 years old," he says. "Maybe some of those are functioning, maybe they're not."

Anderson answers the people who complain that septic systems bring a financial burden to rural people by pointing to the sewer and water bills paid by urban residents. "They've had an expense; we should be able to accept some of these expenses too."

Strangely, much of the controversy over Comm. 83 has come from envronmentalists.

Fred's wife, Sandy Anderson, is concerned about the potential for urban sprawl. "All these new systems that they were going to be able to implement were going to open up a lot more areas up here in northwestern Wisconsin, that you could put homes on, that you could not put homes on before," she says. "This was just increasing the amount of people," she says, "Increasing the amount of sewage systems that we could have."

But she supports Comm. 83 because it, for the first time ensures that septic sytems keep working.

Wisconsin requires counties to enforce the new septic provisions, but a handful are still struggling to do that - Douglas County among them. There's still no program to inspect older systems.

Department of Commerce official Mike Corry tries to nudge the counties along. According to Corry, it's going kind of slow statewide right now.

The law took effect last year, but full compliance is still some time away. That's OK, says Corry. "We don't have a lot of tools to punish counties," he says. "We like to work with them as much as we can. So, no, we're not frustrated. It took us 10 years to get the code adopted," says Corry. "It'll take a number of years to get it implemented."

In Douglas County, local officials are hoping to draw up local regulations acceptable to both county residents and the State of Wisconsin.

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