The board should suspend the regulatory process and begin new work sessions with a legitimate stakeholder committee.  The board should form an ad-hoc committee of stakeholders representing contractors, operators, VDH staff, AOSEs, CPSSs, PEs, homebuilders, environmentalists, rural planning districts, and others. 

If the board rejects many of the criticisms and comments posted in this forum or blindly accepts DPOR staff opinion on what should be done, then the board assures itself of a failed process and a failed regulation.  How can the Board fully and completely vet over 200 comments about its regulations in a one-day meeting, especially when the comments are mostly critical and contain glaring errors in definitions that define the simplest of issues (i.e., definition of alternative onsite soil evaluator, prohibiting people from holding conventional and alternative licenses, defining an hour as 50 minutes, asking for experience that cannot exist, asking for the production of work that cannot be done).  How can this board have credibility when its work product is filled with errors of a very basic nature? 

The only way for the board to adopt a revised set of regulations in a one-day meeting would be to accept DPOR staff recommendations without giving those recommendations adequate time for debate and thought.  I ask the board not to repeat mistakes of the past.  Please meet several days to review all of the comments if you are not willing to reset the process.  You will not give your board legitimacy by relying on DPOR staff to propose a final regulation after a one-day meeting with the ire of so many stakeholders.

Based on what other boards at DPOR have done, VDH created rules that defined the standard of care and ethical obligations of its regulants.  In contrast, DPOR's proposed regulations do not contain standards of conduct, ethical obligations, standards of practice, certification of compliance with standards (e.g., a professional seal) which other boards at DPOR require of its regulants. 

I would suggest that the DPOR staff read the AOSE regulations and GMP #126 and copy as much of the non-controversial stuff as they can from it.  Similarly, these regulations would be much improved if DPOR staff and the Board relied on regulations from other boards that regulate similar practices (contractors board, PE/Surveyor Board).  Instead of using a clean sheet of paper, copy from what has worked at the PE/Surveyor Board, the contractor's board, the AOSE regulations and VDH policy.

Good luck at your next board meeting.