Lake Santeetlah – Dec. 10’s Town of Lake Santeetlah council meeting featured a substantial amount of discussion on a septic tank easement.
Lake Santeetlah homeowner Tonya Bassett requested a variance for a septic tank installation. Town Councilman Roger Carlton explained that while the county had accepted the plans, they had not passed through Lake Santeetlah’s stricter zoning rules.
The issue stemmed from the Island Drive home not being on a large enough parcel to have a conventional septic tank installed due to the length of the tank equipment and the ground being too hard to form a percolation area, which would allow the treated contents of a tank to properly filter into the ground.
Carlton also expressed concerns on the lack of a hard and fast rule for construction, and zoning variances and easements.
“We can’t do things on a lick and a promise, like we’ve been doing for so many years,” Carlton said.
He said there needed to be a set way for easements to be handled by the town, and a way to ensure that officials from Graham County and the Town of Lake Santeetlah would be stay the same page.
Another option would be an engineered tank, which further processes the waste in less space.
Project engineer Seth Early from the Land Resource Management company said the firm had considered the option.
“That’s our firm’s business,” Early said. “That’s what we do.:
The normal size for a system servicing a four-bedroom home is approximately 2,300 square-feet. However, there is only about 700 square feet of soil on the property that a septic tank could be fitted with.
Additionally, members of the board expressed some disagreement over the way minutes had been recorded in the past, with some wanting them to
be recorded with more detail.
However, attorney Brian Gulden emphasized that it wasn’t legally required for the minutes to be a verbatim transcription of the meeting.
“They’re not seconds, they’re minutes,” Gulden said. “You don’t need a verbatim description of what happened.”
The board also unanimously approved a resolution thanking Beth Fields for her service as executive director of the Stecoah Valley Center. Fields announced on Dec. 7 that she would step down from her role, effective March 31.