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Ruling
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ing a directive from Richmond at any time since, but the new private well standards weren’t even placed on the agenda for the state board’s session this August, “and I don’t know if they’re going to be on the agenda for the December meeting,” Mr. Shepherd said. However, “everyone is awfully optimistic that they will be approved,” he added.
The regulations as proposed require private class II wells to be a minimum of 100 feet from a septic drainfield while class I wells, which are built to more stringent standards, must maintain a minimum separation distance of 50 feet.
The distance standard may prove •an insurmountable hurdle to the development of small, exceptionally narrow lots in Rappahannock Lakes now that the permit for the subdivision’s poorly maintained and inadequately supplied community water system has been revoked.
For that reason, county administrator John McCarthy sought an answer last summer from the Health Department on what will happen when an application for a well permit or septic field permit is received and the proposed site fails the separation test. Will the permit be denied? Or if the problem arises because a proposed septic field is too close to an existing — but unpermitted well — will the well be condemned?
It is the new applicant w’ho will lose, according to a ruling handed down in late October by Gary Hagy, enforcement chief at the Health Department’s Richmond headquarters.
Based on a quick estimate made jointly by Mr. Shepherd and county sanitarian Jack Lockhart, as many as 15 lots in the Rappahannock Lakes subdivision may not be able to get well permits, but that risk will arise only after the Board of Health formally adopts the new standards.
Until that point, the Health Department’s regulatory power is restricted to wells installed in conjunction with a septic field. In other words, if the septic permit has already been issued, a landowner may put in a private well at any distance from that septic field or a field on an adjoining lot with no oversight by the health agency.
But even though the Health De
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