MARQUETTE — The Marquette County Board of Commissioners at a recent meeting passed a resolution stating opposition to proposed changes to the statewide septic code.

Changes are proposed in House Bills 5752 and 5753. The board’s June 5 action followed a resolution adopted May 11 by the Upper Peninsula Association of County Commissioners that requested state legislators oppose the two bills.

The proposals would add Part 128 to the Public Health Code of Michigan and establish state and local standards for on-site wastewater treatment systems, commonly referred to as septic systems, according to documents provided to the board and an April 10 House Fiscal Agency analysis of the two bills.

If the two bills pass, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality would develop a statewide code governing the installation, operation, maintenance and inspection of septic systems, according to documents provided to the board.

The recent resolution opposing the two bills states the addition of Part 128 “restricts and removes local controls and changes existing regulations and guidelines that have been effectively enforced by counties and health departments across the Upper Peninsula.”

Board Chairman Gerald Corkin said: “As far as Marquette County, with the local control, it’s worked very well, and (for the Legislature) to come out with new mandates and increase the cost and everything, we just don’t see that it’s necessary here and the rest of the counties in the U.P. feel the same.”

Corkin said the Marquette County Health Department has “done a good job with coming up with rules and regulations on it and enforcing it, and we havent had any huge issues here in the community.”

The bills do not lay out specifics of the statewide code — rather, they lay out a framework for the DEQ to create rules for the code, which would be done within three years of the bills passing.

“There’s a section in those bills that states the Michigan DEQ will promulgate rules within three years and the rules are technical in nature about what minimum requirements are going to be,” said Patrick Jacuzzo, Marquette County Health Department director of environmental health and human resources.

This makes it difficult to say what the specific effects of the proposed statewide code would be.

“No one can really comment to what really the effect will be specifically until we see that rule set,” he said.

However, Jacuzzo says the two bills, as currently written, lay out a framework that would likely be more costly at the local level.

One of the major concerns stated in the county board resolution regards manpower and funding under the proposed code, at both state and local levels.

“The Amendatory Act would add additional mandates that would increase the amount of personnel time and expenses that Upper Peninsula Health Departments would incur under the new Act without adequate funding from the state,” the resolution passed by the county board states.

The resolution also states the DEQ “lacks the necessary budget and staffing levels to meet the mandates of this Amendatory Act which will place an additional financial burden on local authorities.”

Corkin feels the legislation is part of a larger theme of “unfunded mandates” being passed in Michigan’s Legislature.

“In Lansing, to come up with these things and they don’t want to send up any money up, when the costs are increased for what they might want to do, this is an issue in many areas that is disturbing to counties when they want you to do all these all new programs without any money,” Corkin said.