Policies Under Development
Draft—Revised Same Farm Exemption A.09 (PDF)
Open Public Comment Period
We have an open public comment period from July 25, 2024, to August 26, 2024, for the draft policy entitled Same Farm Exemption, linked above. Please review the draft policy and provide comment before the end of the comment period by emailing us at odwpubliccomment@doh.wa.gov.
Background
We began revising the policy in 2023 when we discovered that a lack of definitions in the original 1995 policy (PDF) may have caused misunderstanding of the criteria to meet the exemption. The original policy had two paragraphs of text and an affidavit.
Revised Policy
The draft revised policy now includes additional text for clarity and the definitions of Group A and Group B water systems. The citations for them are:
- Group A is defined in WAC 246-290-010, and
- Group B is defined in WAC 246-291-010.
In addition, the draft policy requires that every five years, the water system owner must reaffirm the system’s status by resubmitting a signed affidavit provided by the Department of Health or its designee, as well as an updated Water Facilities Inventory (WFI) form indicating the number of residents.
Next Steps
- We will review the comments received from the public comment period and consider making changes related to the comments before finalizing the draft revised policy.
- Once we finalize the revised policy, we will post it on this webpage under “Current Policies," below. We will send notification through our email distribution list. You can join our email list to get new and revised policies by email.
Current Policies
Office of Drinking Water policies describe how we implement a law or rule. Each policy includes our practice or procedure. The statements made in these documents reflect our interpretations of rule and law and approaches to implementation. Water system requirements are not in our policies. These requirements are found in rule and law. View drinking water rules page.
Rescinded policies are only available as hard copy. View rescinded policies.
If you have questions about a policy or need a copy mailed to you, contact Brad Burnham. at 564-669-0820.
Join our email list to get new and revised policies by email.