RES-2004-018 Resolution Regarding Orange County's 2004 Legislative Agenda

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19 a permit with minimal or no review based upon the certified site evaluator's work and introduce a method by which site evaluators can be held accountable for their decisions. We do not have the same confidence that a certification committee would be successful in taking appropriate action for errors, omissions, and bad actors, let alone making accountability stick. -The same type of oversight exists for engineers, licensed soil scientists, and certified operators, but the respective governing boards have been reluctant to take action on their members. In particular, the North Carolina Board for the Licensing of Soil Scientists already has the legal authority via NCGS ~89F-23 to seek injunctive relief against those involved in soils work who are not legally licensed and, to our knowledge, they have refused to take such action even when those persons are apparently in blatant and multiple violations of the licensing act and operating in direct competition with their own membership. Given this refusal to hold non-members accountable, we do not expect them to hold their own members to any greater or even reasonable standards. It is not clear, but could be assumed that Environmental Health Specialists employed by the local health department would also have to become certified as site evaluators. Regardless, we strive to keep our on-site wastewater staff here in Orange County on the leading edge of technologies and evaluation practices in the field. While we are not opposed to elevating the overall state of practice for local health department practitioners, it would pose another requirement for continuing education and, in effect, be an unfunded mandate for counties to absorb. 3) Require that all lands that are subject to local subdivision approval that do not have access to a public sewer system must be evaluated by a licensed soil scientist prior to recordation with the county register of deeds. Involving the soil scientist at the beginning of a proposed development will assist the developer in making the most out of the proposed development within the parameters of the soils available and will assist the local health department by filtering out unsuitable properties from being proposed for development prior to the permit application stage. We have no objection to this element of the proposal. This is currently an option available to developers proposing a subdivision and is commonly used on a voluntary basis. In Orange County, a variation of this requirement already exists in the current subdivision ordinance. There also needs to be a provision to address subdivisions that intend to use systems other than on-site wastewater systems such as package treatment plants.