THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Published: Thursday, May 20, 2010
Edition: Home Final
Section: News
Page: 04B

The state Senate unanimously approved a bill yesterday aimed at creating uniform septic-system standards for Ohio homeowners, after several years of legislative wrangling. Senate Bill 110, introduced last year by Republican Sen. Tom Niehaus, of New Richmond in southwestern Ohio, was held up for more than a year while legislators argued about whether the regulations would saddle homeowners with expensive systems.

Those concerns sidelined regulations approved in 2007, the first update to the state's guidelines in more than 30 years. In the absence of statewide provisions, county health boards set their own rules.

Earlier versions of the bill had been attacked as cost-prohibitive by Sen. Timothy J. Grendell, a Republican from Chesterland, in northeastern Ohio. Grendell said yesterday that the legislation now protects property owners' pocketbooks as well as public health. The House has yet to approve a version of the bill.

Niehaus said the bill, in its ninth version, offers a wide range of septic systems that owners can install based on the soil on their property and calls for an appeals process for violations, a scientific standard for the definition of a public-health nuisance and the grandfathering in of older systems in use throughout the state.

He added that the bill also would give homeowners an opportunity to repair failing systems, when appropriate, instead of replacing them.

Opponents of the bill had been concerned that standards based on the depth of soil between septic fields and bedrock would require many homeowners, including those with working systems, to install mound systems that they said would cost two to three times as much as a more-traditional leach field.

The bill's backers have said statewide regulations are necessary because a 2008 study by the Ohio Department of Health determined that 23 percent of the household systems in the state were failing and 13 percent were projected to fail in the next five years.

Niehaus said yesterday that leach-field systems make up about 60 percent of the septic systems in the state and would continue to do so after the proposed new rules would go into effect. That would happen in January 2012, if the House approves. He said the House version of the bill is very similar, and he hopes for quick passage so that it can be signed into law by Gov. Ted Strickland.

The standards still have critics, including Karen Mancl, an Ohio State University professor who studies sewage and water quality. She has said they don't go far enough to protect drinking water and streams and that some septic systems fail as soon as they're installed.

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