Jacobson is in favor of exploring whether the county's zoning regulations could be changed to allow single-family home construction on lots of less than two acres in the agricultural district. The two-acre minimum lot size discriminates against families that want to build their dream home, but can't afford a chunk of land that big, he said. Certainly, it is a government's responsibility to see that no resident experiences discrimination because of his financial status. But it is also government's responsibility to protect the natural resources of its land, and the health of its community. Wells and septic tanks simply don't make good neighbors.
Drinking water is safest when it's separated by the longest space possible from a septic system.
Decreasing minimum lot sizes not only endangers the families that build there, but adjacent families as well, crowding well after septic after well on a too-small parcel of land. A study by the Warren County Health Department has already shown that 49 percent of 358 wells tested were contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria. Statistics like these coupled with Warren's limestone topography, full of sinkholes and underground channels that provide direct access to groundwater, point to a more immediate course of action. We have only to look to our north to see the problems caused when too many septic fields crowd on too little land. Each home in each of the small towns had its own septic system, although they did rely on a community water system based at a large spring just outside Boyce.