Neighbors: Septic-Tank Scofflaws Raising A Stink

Pend Oreille County is cracking down on people who thumb their noses at sanitation laws and force neighbors to hold their noses.

Some of the cases involve make-shift shelters or battered trailers lacking even an outhouse.

At the request of county commissioners, the Northeast Tri-County Health District and Prosecutor Tom Metzger began bringing sewage scofflaws to court last month. A half-dozen cases have been filed and at least a dozen more are imminent.

“We told him to work with the environmental health people and do what needs to be done,” Commissioner Joel Jacobsen said.

Constituents who follow the rules are complaining it’s unfair to ignore violators, Commissioner Karl McKenzie said.

The issue cuts across ideological lines. While some fret about fairness, others worry about environmental damage. Where some see children at risk of disease, others see deadbeats who hurt property values.

“We have some people who have figured out how to skirt all the rules,” Commissioner Mike Hanson said. “I don’t think we want to invite any more of them into the county.”

For Jacobsen, the issue boils down to children: “In many cases, there are kids being victimized by their own parents.”

Hanson agreed, recalling a case last year in which a couple agreed to get a septic system after learning the family outhouse was contaminating their children’s sandbox.

“How people can live in this squalor just appalls me,” said Deputy Prosecutor Greg Hicks. “Basically, you’re dealing with squatters. When we apply the heat, they just move on and leave behind whatever they don’t care to take with them.”

Hicks, who handles all the sewage cases, hopes the crackdown on property owners won’t “wind up flooding the court system.” Fortunately, he said, enforcement involves a relatively simple civil procedure for getting a court order.

No one is sure how many more cases are waiting in the wings, but the potential is great because of rapid population growth and chronically high unemployment.

Applications for septic permits roughly doubled between 1993 and 1995, according to James Sayre, Pend Oreille County environmental health supervisor for the three-county health district. It stands to reason, he said, that there also has been an increase in the number of newcomers who don’t bother with septic systems, let alone permits.

The health district gave Sayre an assistant a year ago to cope with the growth, but the problem is not limited to Pend Oreille County. In fact, Stevens County residents Boyd Hunter and Forrest Campman have filed a $10 million claim against the county for what they call inadequate efforts to force one of their Springdale-area neighbors to install a septic system.

In one of the most flagrant Pend Oreille County cases, health inspector Edwin Schoneck reported last July that a defective cesspool “continuously” poured raw sewage onto the ground and into a small lake about nine miles west of Newport.

In another case, people in Usk complained that a family with three children was using a shed and nearby bushes as toilets because its rental trailer house wasn’t connected to the community’s sewer system.

Court records say the state Child Protective Services office investigated, but took no action because the family claimed to have been using a portable toilet at a nearby general store. The dilapidated trailer is now vacant.

Another court case involves a rural property on Cusick Creek Road, about eight miles north of Cusick. Neighbors started complaining about lack of a septic system and “garbage everywhere” in May 1993.

Another complaint in September said rats were packing the garbage all around the area.

A health inspector said the garbage problem had been corrected when he checked in November 1993, but there were more complaints in March 1995. The property owner said in August 1995 that she was trying to get a federal loan to pay for a septic system, but the loan fell through and she wanted to put off construction until this spring.

Sayre said inability to drill septic test holes in winter often prevents prompt enforcement. Some people avoid the regulations altogether by living in buses or small travel trailers they claim are occupied only temporarily, he added.

Sandi Tonyan, who lives on Coyote Trail Road near Newport, thinks there are far too many excuses for lack of enforcement.

Tonyan and her husband, Ron, fear one of their two wells is being contaminated by a nearby family that has no septic system. She said the neighbors moved into a makeshift house eight months ago and somehow managed to get electrical service without a building permit.

“The fellow from Tri-County Health told me that raw sewage was running out of the house when he was up there,” Tonyan said. “And which way does sewage run? It runs downhill, and they’re uphill from us.”

Tonyan believes there is a “rampant” problem of welfare recipients acquiring a few acres of undeveloped land in Pend Oreille County and setting up residence in shacks, buses and battered trailers without proper sanitation.

“You can talk to practically any working stiff up here and they’ve got a problem with no septic fields in the place next to them,” she said. “I’m not trying to be a snob about it. I just don’t want to live like that, and I don’t want to have my property devalued by it.”

Tonyan, who has two children of her own, also worries about the welfare of a 9-year-old girl in her neighbors’ house.

She said her complaints to authorities have angered the neighbors, and she now fears for her family’s safety.

“I didn’t think I was asking too much,” she said. “The law isn’t just written for people who want to follow it. It’s for everyone.”

Prosecutor Metzger said Tonyan’s complaint may soon get action.

Another complaint awaiting action comes from an Oregon man who asked not to be identified. The man owns some timberland near Sacheen Lake, about 12 miles west of Newport, and discovered last year that some of his neighbors were using his property as a latrine.

In addition to four pits where pails of excrement apparently had been dumped, the man said he found numerous surface deposits that appeared to have occurred whenever nature called.

“I used to think that toilet paper would disintegrate pretty quickly,” the man said. “I now know for sure that, once it gets rained on or snowed on, it turns into a white glob of papier mache and it just sort of stays there.”

The victim believes the culprits are the same neighbors who are suspected of stealing 118 of his trees, another crime that is still under investigation. Authorities plan to comb the area for neighbors without septic systems.

Sayre said the perpetrator’s alfresco toilet habits are illegal only when practiced on someone else’s land.

While septic systems may be required, he said, “There is no law that says, ‘Thou shalt not poop upon the surface of your property.”’

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