An Island County program aimed at ensuring septic tanks don’t contaminate surface or ground water will continue even though the funding was slashed in a budget balancing act.

A new $62 fee will fund the program. The owners of homes with septic tanks will pay the fee when a house is sold.

Members of the Island County Board of Health passed the fee Monday as part of a package of across-the-board, 4-percent fee increases in the Island County Health Department. Only the food program was exempted from the increase.

Director Keith Higman recommended that the commissioners adopt either the $62 fee to be paid at the sale of a house or a $33 fee that all septic-tank owners would pay when their septic tanks are inspected. The board chose the former.

Higman said he proposed the new fee as a way to fund the health department’s operation and maintenance program for septic systems. The commissioners cut the funding to balance a budget that was in the red, so Higman proposed it as a way of keeping the state-mandated program alive.

Higman estimated that the fund will bring in $170,000 a year, though the number may fall short in the current housing market. There are about 23,000 homes with septic tanks in the county.

The goal of the health department’s program is to educate the public about the rules regarding septic tank inspection and to monitor compliance. Under new regulations, homes with traditional gravity systems need to be inspected once every three years and alternative systems need to be inspected every year.

The deadline for folks with regular septic systems to get inspections is July 1, 2010.

Newly-elected Island County Commissioner Helen Price Johnson, who’s also a health board member, expressed reluctance in instituting the fee in the current economic climate.

“I’m hesitant to add this fee on top of the inspection fee,” Price Johnson said. Inspection fees are estimated to run around $300.

But ultimately, the board passed the fee creation and increases unanimously.

Commissioner Mac McDowell, who was not at the meeting Monday, previously argued that the county should simply not comply with the state’s new rules regulating septic tanks, which are ultimately aimed at keeping Puget Sound cleaner. He said the county should drop the program and not pass the fee. With an economy in crisis, McDowell proposed that the county tell state officials that it can’t afford the mandate for now.

In fact, McDowell argued that the county’s surface water testing program does a better job of detecting failed septic tanks than an inspection program ever could. He said he doubted the inspections could find many problems by simply looking at the tanks.

But McDowell was overruled by commissioners John Dean and Price Johnson, who felt that the septic tank inspection program was valuable. Price Johnson noted the septic-tank contamination of Holmes Harbor and said that preventing leaks was cheaper in the long run than cleaning up larger problems.

McDowell lost in the November election. He will be replaced in January by Angie Homola.