Starkey looks at wastewater law again

STARKEY--Despite being a hot button issue at the end of last year, no member of the public took the opportunity to speak during the Thursday, May 12 Starkey board meeting on the design and implementation of a new wastewater law. The item was listed on the "unfinished business" section of the meeting agenda.
The board had initially put forward a law that would have required residents to have scheduled septic inspections and address inadequacies but withdrew it prior to 2022 due to concerns from the public and other issues such as a stream map used in the proposal.
"The thing with doing these, is once you get to a point for a public hearing for a proposed law, beyond punctuation you can't make any changes to the law without starting the procedure over," said Starkey Town Supervisor George Lawson. "So the idea is to get the input now and get these issues addressed and have a dialogue with people with concerns so when we get started we aren't backtracking again."
While in the process of attempting to adopt the initial law, which itself was delayed due to COVID, the public hearing scheduled for November was canceled when it was determined additional work needed to be done. The email address starkeywastewater@gmail.com was set up for communication with the community on this issue specifically.
"There were some valid concerns brought up so we thought let's go back and address those," Lawson said.
The draft document is available on the town website at: https://tinyurl.com/2p928byr.
"We are trying to get input from the public before starting the process [to] formally [adopt] it and so far haven't heard very much," added Lawson.