Humorist Erma Bombeck meant it as a joke when she titled a book “The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.”

To homeowners, though, it’s not funny. If you have an “individual subsurface sewage disposal system” – usually a septic tank and drainfield – the nutrients you flush down the toilet are supposed to stay inside a sealed underground tank long enough to let the solids settle to the bottom. Then the remaining liquid flows out to a leaching area where it can be filtered through gravel and soil before rejoining the groundwater.

It’s an operation best kept out of sight, but if you don’t provide a large enough area for your household’s output to spread out, the system can fail, which is unpleasant and costly, not to mention hazardous to ground and surface water and public health – even as a patch of lawn flourishes.

To help prevent that – and “prevent” is the operative word – the Panhandle Health District wants to establish more realistic standards for septic systems in Idaho’s five northern counties. Eventually it will need the Legislature’s OK, and that’s no gimme.

If the spirit of freedom and independence are strong in the West, they are downright trenchant in Idaho. If you’re going to tell a property owner how big to make his septic system, you’d better have a compelling reason.

The reasons are compelling.

Under policies followed by Idaho’s seven public health districts, a one-bedroom house needs a drainfield to handle 150 gallons of discharge a day. For more bedrooms, add 50 gallons each.

Unfortunately, that figure is thought to be well below the actual flow. Of 11 Western states, the other 10 all assume higher figures. Few if any states anywhere in the union assume lower flows than Idaho. The federal Environmental Protection Agency expects a three-bedroom house to generate 400 to 500 gallons a day. No wonder that during recent meetings with the health district, stakeholder groups broadly agreed that Idaho’s standard should be increased.

Indeed, the Panhandle Health District board voted last month to support a more demanding standard that would require drainfields to accommodate 400 gallons a day for a three-bedroom house, with another 100 gallons each for fourth and fifth bedrooms and 50 gallons per bedroom beyond that. In the past, lawmakers have refused to grant the authority to impose more realistic standards. On the Legislature’s advice, the Panhandle district is pursuing a negotiated rule-making process that includes stakeholder meetings and a general public meeting still to come on Oct. 10.

After that, the board will have to decide whether to take its ideas to the Legislature in January.

Given the political resistance regulatory expansion generates in Boise, we understand the Panhandle Health District’s caution. But it’s difficult to imagine that the region’s elected representatives would turn down reasonable steps to protect the natural assets that are helping the region to thrive and which, if tainted, will be hard to reclaim.