New law requires septic tank inspections every five years Florida Governor Charlie Crist-I (formerly R) signed SB550, also known as the springs bill, in June of this year. According to News Service Florida he will not delay the implementation of this bill that will require septic tank inspections every five years to protect Florida springs, despite several calls from lawmakers to push it back from January to July 2011. These lawmakers wrote Governor Crist to say that the septic tank inspection requirement is too expensive in such a tight economy. In a statement from Crist's spokesman Sterling Ivey, he said that 'the governor is not delaying implementation.' In a letter to the governor on Congress.org the author cites that the 11 pages of a septic tank bill, that would not pass on it's own merits in previous years, were inserted into a 171 page environmental bill and that 'several legislators said that they were 'hoodwinked' into voting for it because they did not realize that 'last minute' changes were made to it prior to the final vote.' This is yet another case of our representatives not reading the bill! The author goes on to say that he has spoken with septic tank contractors who state that there would be little or no improvement in water quality simply because of the nature of the cycle of septage returning to the aquifer. This bill was passed in response to pressure from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to impose limits on the amount of chemical pollution that would be allowed in state bodies of water. This most certainly relates back to my recent article Two if by sea where President Obama signed Executive Order 13547 which imposes more federal regulation and control over all of the bodies of water within the states and along the coasts of the United States. Estimates for the cost of having your septic tank inspected every five years run from $180.00 to $800.00. One of the troubling issues is that this bill was in part crafted by the companies that will be paid to do the inspections. It also requires the creation of regional bodies to handle the septic tank inspections. If this law is not repealed, what is to say that your property could not be condemned due to some arbitrary numbers on a report issued by a septic tank inspector? Who among us is expert in this field to challenge such a finding? There are 2.6 million septic tanks in the state, which will all have to be inspected once every five years by 2016. Good work if you can get it, I guess. Several of our legislators are attempting to repeal at least the section of this bill that requires the five year inspections (Section 37) and I urge you to support these efforts by contacting your representative and expressing your thoughts about this law.