By Scott Wright

CENTRE —  Since Weiss Lake was built in the early 1960's, waterfront property owners have had free reign, relatively speaking, to develop their land any way they wanted.

But over the last couple of years, economic growth in Cherokee County, along with a corresponding increase in development along the lakefront, has resulted in renewed scrutiny from organizations and agencies charged with imposing long-standing shoreline regulations that have gone largely ignored for decades.

In June, Alabama Power Co., which owns the 30,000-acre reservoir, established a full-time shoreline management office in Cherokee County to enforce limits on the size and placement of seawalls, boat houses and other lakeside structures. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) paid a visit to county officials last month; a letter detailing the county's decades of flood plain management deficiencies is expected any day.

The Cherokee County Health Department is well aware inadequate sewage systems are in place at hundreds of recreational lots that line the lake. According to Senior Environmentalist Wade Bobo, the health department has been doing what it can to address the problem, with scant help from the county government in years past.

“Lot owners have come in here and set up with no regulations, no restrictions, no notice from us, the county, anybody, and they've just developed these places -- 100-lot recreational lot subdivisions,” said Bobo. “Somebody develops all these lots with 50 ft. by 200 ft. lots, and someone pulls a (recreational vehicle) in there and sits it on it.”

Bobo said he's had a difficult time in the past trying to explain to local officials exactly what sort of enforcement powers he needs to make sure every recreational lot owner in the county follows the rules regarding proper sewage treatment.

“In 1999, the Bureau of Environmental Service at the state Department of Public Health developed some regulations,” Bobo said. “So, now we've got a piece of local legislation that empowers us to enforce connections to some of these decentralized sewer systems, but we haven't been able to do it because we need help forcing people to connect.”

Decentralized sewage systems have already been installed at several new residential and recreational developments in the county. The units are designed to treat and disperse into the ground up to thousands of gallons of waste every day.

“The units are totally self-contained and have already increased the value of waterfront property where they've been installed,” Bobo said.

Bobo said state regulations that would force recreational lot owners to connect to proposed new decentralized sewage systems are being ignored in Cherokee County because lot owners began complaining to local elected officials about the cost of hooking onto the systems.

“You've got people who scream their heads off when you want to charge them $1,500 for a connection fee. And that's kind of basically where we're at today,” he said.

Probate Judge and County Commission President Kirk Day told The Post he's hopeful the voters will give the commissioners power to enforce health-related issues when they vote on a home rule amendment on Nov. 7. He said the problem county officials have had with the decentralized sewage systems was that only selected areas were being offered access to them.

“By making those connections mandatory, we would have been forcing landowners to do business with a single company,” Day said. “The previous owner of that (sewage system installation) company told me he was not willing to run services to places on the lake that contained only a few lots. He said he was going to concentrate in areas where there were the most people. The county was unwilling to grant his business a state-sponsored monopoly if he wasn't going to offer to help everybody -- it's just wrong.”

Besides, Day said, landowners with sewage systems that already meet the state health codes shouldn't be forced to pay out money just to line some business owner's pockets.

“If (lot owners) have been cited for non-compliance, that should be enforced by the state,” Day said. “But if they're already in compliance, they should be left alone. The role of government is not to be a 'heavy' for private business.”

Over 14,000 potential problems
Bobo said his department conducted a survey in 2001 and found around 14,800 campers sitting along the shoreline, many of which are not connected to any type of sewage treatment system. Bobo's boss, State Health Department Area Director Jim Hollins, said the number of temporary campers currently using above-ground sewage containers -- called “buddy” tanks -- instead of a treatment system could spell disaster for water quality in Weiss Lake.

“There is a problem, mainly when the rain comes in and the lake level rises,” Hollins said. “When the water goes up a lot of those tanks, even the buddy tanks, are going to be underwater and they've got sewage in them. So, it turns out then that you're going to have contamination -- whether you've got a buddy tank, a septic tank and field line, whatever you've got along that shoreline -- because it's in the flood easement. When it rains and floods up, you're going to get sewage (in the lake). It's just going to happen.”

Hollins said he's authorized the Cherokee County Health Department to hand out 15-day notices warning sewage violators to get their systems up to specifications. But he said it's hard to enforce the regulations when there are so many people whose lots have already slipped under the radar.

“I think now, you've got over 14,000 lots,” Hollins said. “If we go in and tell each one of those owners, 'OK, your lot is no good, move out,' it's not going to fly in court.”

Hollins said under the current circumstances, all he can really do is encourage recreational lot owners to keep their tanks emptied.

“We're trying to educate people so they'll keep their tanks pumped out,” Hollins said. “And when the rainy season comes, we tell them to pump it our more often than usual instead of waiting until it fills up and runs over.”

Following Shelby's lead
Hollins said he'd like to see Cherokee County institute a system similar to one he's already seen work well along the Coosa River near Birmingham.

“In some of the other counties I supervise -- Shelby County, for example -- there is a building inspection program,” Hollins explained. “Someone goes to inspect anything being built around the lake there and the builders can't get power, water, anything, until they give the county government a certificate saying their sewage disposal system is proper. Here, it's not quite like that. By the time the health department gets there, the landowner has been there for years.”

Day said he thinks a system similar to that mentioned by Hollins would be a good idea.

“I think Shelby County's idea is an excellent way to address some of the sewage-related problems here,” Day said. “Rep. Richard Lindsey has been very supportive in the past about getting through local acts that are beneficial for the county and I would say we can work with him to model one after Shelby County. That would be a good thing.”

Bobo said he's looking forward to talking with the commissioners and working towards an agreement that will benefit everyone in Cherokee County.

“The Department of Public Health in this county has come up, in the last 7 or 8 years, with some solutions for solving some of these problems,” said Bobo. “If we could just sit down and talk to the commissioners and tell them what we want to accomplish and ask how they can help us, hopefully they'll say 'here's what we want, how can you help us?' and exchange those ideas.”

Day said he and the county commissioners will be glad to sit down and talk with representatives from the Cherokee County Health Department.

“We certainly welcome the health department coming in to talk about this problem, but they haven't asked to talk to the County Commission in the two years I've been in office,” Day said. “We recognize the important of Weiss Lake to almost all aspects of the county and this is certainly a serious problem. We would welcome them coming to talk to us about it.”

Bobo agreed that whatever solution is reached will be for the benefit of the entire county, because the situation has gone largely unattended for too long.

“This situation didn't get started overnight. It's been 30-something years getting things in the shape they're in,” Bobo said. “But we've improved what is was when we started 8 or 9 years ago and we'll do whatever it takes to fix this situation.”