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Editorial
Time for some action We don’t understand the Health Department. The Division of Water Quality, whose job it is to monitor public water systems, lets a system that clearly meets the definition of a community water supply slip out of its monitoring program. Sampling—wrhich was handled poorly by the owner in the first place—stops. And it comes to a halt just months after tests show a potential health hazard from contamination by fecal coliform. , Lines rupture, taps run dry, subsidiary water sources are patched into the system, all while it still meets the criteria for a community water supply. At some point, property owners run out of patience at running out of water. They disconnect and either hook into another private well or dig wells of their own, and Rappahannock Lakes drops below the the 15 connections or 25 users necessary for classification as a public community water system. S Everybody, including the Health Department, forgets * * about the permit, the inspections, and the monitoring. And so it goes for eight years until a prospective buyer » needs a variance to build a house on one of the subdivision’s -w little quarter-acre lots. In assessing the impact of that variance on public health and safety, Rappahannock’s Board of Zoning Appeals again brings the water system to the i- Health Department’s attention. Yes, health officials concede, it may no longer be a public . system in actuality, having only five connections, but it remains a public system on paper. And since that paper ? permit remains in the files—no matter that the agency’s responsibilities for monitoring have been ignored these eight * years—the Health Department will approve no private wells come Sept. 15 when all new private wells must be approved ; under state law. Owners who may want to build a house on any of the 40 unimproved lots in Rappahannock Lakes—some of which are plenty big enough to meet the current setback distances in the county’s zoning ordinances—will not be allowed to connect to the inadequate private system now maintained by _ the Homeowners Association. ' And after Sept. 15, when they must have a permit for a
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