SEQUIM — The next knock on your door might be the septic police.
They just won’t tell you to clean up your act, however; they’ll help you should you have a failing system.
Janine Reed, Clallam County environmental health specialist, will start making door-to-door visits this week in neighborhoods along Matriotti, Mud, and Meadowbrook creeks and in the Golden Sands area.
Her initial purpose will be to identify “septics of concern” and talk to homeowners about maintaining their systems.
She’ll also teach the Septic 101 workshop offered periodically by the Clallam County Department of Health and Human Services.
And she’ll help some homeowners share in a $60,000 fund that will help them pump or repair their septics.
Dungeness Bay targeted
Reed’s mission is just part of a $1.5 million project that targets Dungeness Bay and its watershed.
Of the total cost, $984,000 comes from a grant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe.
Other partners in the project are Battelle Marine Sciences Laboratory, Clallam County, Cline Irrigation District, Clallam Ditch Co., Clallam Conservation District and Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society.
The EPA Targeted Watershed Initiative grant to the tribe is one of only 14 of its kind in the nation, one of only two in the Northwest, and the only one in Washington.
On the county level, a portion of six employees’ salaries will comprise the $127,411 local match to $307,847 in federal funds for the county’s part of the project. The conservation district contributed $350,000.
