HOUGHTON — After tabling the issue in March, the Houghton County board approved the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department’s revised environmental health code at its meeting last week.

The code will replace the current plan for well and septic systems, which was last revised 25 years ago.

The board voted 4-1 in favor of the plan, with Commissioner Joel Keranen casting the only vote against it.

Chair Tom Tikkanen recalled an effort several years ago to create a statewide health code, which he said was more onerous and would have interfered with private property rights. By contrast, the WUPHD’s code would offer more flexibility for projects.

Tikkanen relayed a conversation with a member of a three-generation contracting company in Houghton County who told him his father had been skeptical of the new code, bit came around once he learned more about it.

“It might not be perfect, but it’s a good effort to maintain more local control,” Tikkanen said. “I’m not a sanitarian, I’m not an engineer, but I’m capable of simple math. I can tell you that the calls that I received from contractors in Houghton County … were overwhelmingly in favor of adopting this resolution.”

Keranen is also one of the county’s three representatives on the WUPHD board, where he also cast the sole vote against the plan. While he liked many parts of the plan, he reiterated his belief that the plan should add a definition for “potential,” which appears several times in both the new and existing plans. One typical example allows the health department to condemn or order the abandonment of a system with “the potential to create a public health hazard.”

He compared it with a clause, which he supported, declaring it unlawful to abuse or obstruct a Health Department employee during the course of performing their job.

“It’s vital that our employees in the health department be protected from harm while doing their job … what protection does a private individual have from bureaucracy in this health code? None that I can see,” he said.

Rather than wait 25 years, Keranen said the board should update the code every two years to accommodate new changes in technology.

The 1998 plan only applies to residential property. Businesses are regulated under the stricter state code, which makes it more difficult to obtain approval for septic systems. About 32% of evaluations for businesses under the old code end in denials, WUPHD Environmental Health Director Tanya Rule said at a previous meeting.

Gary Gustafson of Trout Creek, an installer for the past 40 years, spoke in support of the code.

“We’ve had vast improvements in the code in that time, and it still allows for developments in a lot of our rural areas,” he said. “…Small business can actually thrive a little bit with this new code.”

James Lorenson, chair of the Gogebic County Board, which approved the code in March, said there had been no dissent at a public hearing on the code.

While the county doesn’t want excessive regulations, he said, “we also realize that having an environmental health code that’s designed to meet our specific needs, rather than a one size-fits-all, as dictated all too often from Lansing, certainly has its advantages.”

The new code can be read at wuphd.org.