RCW 70.118.030 Local boards of health—Administrative search warrant—Administrative plan—Corrections.

(1) Local boards of health shall identify failing septic tank drainfield systems in the normal manner and will use reasonable effort to determine new failures. The local health officer, environmental health director, or equivalent officer may apply for an administrative search warrant to a court official authorized to issue a criminal search warrant. The warrant may only be applied for after the local health officer or the health officer's designee has requested inspection of the person's property under the specific administrative plan required in this section, and the person has refused the health officer or the health officer's designee access to the person's property. Timely notice must be given to any affected person that a warrant is being requested and that the person may be present at any court proceeding to consider the requested search warrant. The court official may issue the warrant upon probable cause. A request for a search warrant must show [that] the inspection, examination, test, or sampling is in response to pollution in commercial or recreational shellfish harvesting areas or pollution in fresh water. A specific administrative plan must be developed expressly in response to the pollution. The local health officer, environmental health director, or equivalent officer shall submit the plan to the court as part of the justification for the warrant, along with specific evidence showing that it is reasonable to believe pollution is coming from the septic system on the property to be accessed for inspection. The plan must include each of the following elements:

(a) The overall goal of the inspection;

(b) The location and identification by address of the properties being authorized for inspection;

(c) Requirements for giving the person owning the property and the person occupying the property if it is someone other than the owner, notice of the plan, its provisions, and times of any inspections;

(d) The survey procedures to be used in the inspection;

(e) The criteria that would be used to define an on-site sewage system failure; and

(f) The follow-up actions that would be pursued once an on-site sewage system failure has been identified and confirmed.

(2) Discretionary judgment will be made in implementing corrections by specifying nonwater-carried sewage disposal devices or other alternative methods of treatment and effluent disposal as a measure of ameliorating existing substandard conditions. Local regulations shall be consistent with the intent and purposes stated in this section.

[ 1998 c 152 § 1; 1977 ex.s. c 133 § 3.]