Grant County Health Board pushes back on 'one-stop' permitting

EPHRATA — As officials with the Grant County Health District continue to work toward providing “one-stop” review of building and septic tanks permits, members of the district’s board of directors expressed some concerns about his the process is shaping up.

At a regular meeting of the Grant County Health District Board last Wednesday, several members pushed back against the desire by county officials to have someone from the district’s environmental health department work on septic tank permits in the county building department.

“How many complaints?” asked David Curnel, a physician in Moses Lake and member of both the Moses Lake City Council and the Grant County Health District Board of Directors. “They (the county commissioners) say they get complaints, but they haven’t told us a whole lot.”

“We’re doing a lot for this, but we don’t have any evidence there is an issue,” he added.

Curnel was referring to concerns raised earlier in the year by county commissioners Richard Stevens, Cindy Carter and Tom Taylor — all three of whom are also members of the Health District board — that building and septic tank permits in the county were taking too long, and that the process would go faster if all permitting were consolidated in the county’s offices in Ephrata.

However, Health District staff said the change still poses some “challenges” that need to worked out from how to rotate environmental health staff — who do on site inspections — into the field and how to talk to the county’s computer network and building permit software.

“We will no longer take applications in Moses Lake,” said Jon Ness, manager of the district’s environmental health division. “There are transition issues that we need to work through to put some staff into another agency’s office.”

“We’re having a conversation with the county commissioners, but there’s still a lot to be worked through,” said Health District Administrator Theresa Adkinson. “This is not budget neutral.”

None of the three Grant County commissioners were at last week’s meeting.

John Glassco, a member of the Soap Lake city council and the owner of Eco-nomic, an Ephrata-based environmental consultancy that designs and reviews septic systems, said the proposed “one-stop” permitting process will not work.

Glassco said the biggest obstacle is the county’s requirement to review for critical areas — wetlands, slopes, Native American sites — and the fact that those areas have not been made as public as they should be.

“You don’t know what they are until a plan is submitted,” Ness added. “I don’t like that.”

Health board chairman Tony Massa, who is also the mayor of Warden, said the district should continue to meet with the commissioners and press for more information on the number of complaints about building permits.

“We need to get real facts and statistics,” Curnel added.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.