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Senate Approves Loan Program to Help Public Health Crisis in Coastal Lakes

Low- and moderate-income homeowners and small-businesses would get access to low-interest loans to replace failing septic systems polluting lakes, streams and groundwater. Many of these septic users cannot currently get access to the capital needed to hook up to a sewer system or replace their septic tanks, allowing human sewage to contaminate Oregon’s treasured coastal lakes, leaving them unfit for drinking or swimming.
February 26, 2016

The state Senate has passed a bill that devises a potential solution to a public health crisis in rural Oregon: aging, failing septic systems that pollute lakes, rivers and groundwater, because their owners cannot afford to replace them.

Senate Bill 1563 allocates $250,000 to the Department of Environmental Quality to work with a third-party administrator to offer low-interest loans to homeowners with septic systems that need replacing. The bill passed the Senate unanimously on Thursday and heads to the House floor for a final vote next week.

The loans -- worth about $10,000 to $15,000 a pop -- would enable the homeowner or small-business owner to repair or build a new septic system or connect to a nearby sewer line. Sen. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, believes as many as 200 septic users could be helped.

The new program is based on a successful one in Washington state, which works with special lenders such as Craft3, which specialize in these kind of low-interest microloans for people the big banks might ignore. “They’ve [Washington] got a revolving fund that’s millions of dollars,” he said.

Roblan said as homeowners pay back the program, it will provide a revolving fund for Oregon with the repaid principals, which counties or the state could contribute more money to down the road. The third-party administrator and DEQ would divide up the interest on the loans to pay their costs.

“It’s like a disaster right now, especially on the Coast,” said Angela Crowley-Koch, the legislative director for the Oregon Environmental Council. “There are a lot of failing septic systems on the Coast where the cost of repair is more than the cost of the house.”

The “houses” in question are typically older mobile homes, which are assessed in value like cars with tremendous depreciation. If the state finds out these systems are contaminating their property, it can force them to vacate the property. The goal of this program is to give people a chance to proactively fix systems they know need to be repaired before anything as tragic as ordering them out of their homes happens.

Roblan said many of these systems date back 50 to 75 years before modern standards were put in place.

The problem has been especially bad in unincorporated La Pine in central Oregon, where septic water easily leaches through the soil to the water table and at Tenmile Lake in Coos County, where septic systems can be underwater in winter as lake levels rise.

“We have big algae blooms in all of our coastal lakes,” Roblan told The Lund Report. “People are getting their water from the lake that now we can’t drink.”

Roblan said he grew up in Seattle near Lake Washington when open sewer outflows into the lake left it vulnerable to algae blooms and frequently unfit for swimming. Decades after these outflows were closed off from the lake, it is now a jewel of the city.

That’s a future he wishes to impart on Devil’s Lake in Lincoln City, where poorer homeowners could finally have the means to hook up to the city’s sewer line and give up malfunctioning septic systems that threaten the health of the lake.

“We could get all of the septics off the lake,” he said. More comfortable homeowners will still have to find another route to remedy faulty septic systems, but possibly end the standstill where downscale residents are helpless to fix a problem polluting the lakes and water table for everyone. “We’re talking about helping the poorest of the poor.”

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