DEQ's failure to regulate

I noticed a while back that Jackson County is seeking an exception to one of Oregon's statewide land use planning goals in order to extend sewer services to rural properties where there is a demonstrated public health hazard.  Nothing extraordinary in that.  After all, if the public will be harmed by the failure of existing sewage treatment facilities to perform and there is no other way to fix the problem, then by all means, expand society's indebtedness* and put in sewers.  My bigger concern is the reason why this sewer extension is needed at all.  When you read the staff report from Jackson County, there is much discussion of how severely limited the soils are for septic systems and that is why they are failing and that is why they cannot be upgraded.  Here is an excerpt from page 10 of the staff report: 

"Figures 1 through 7 in Exhibit A presented in the background section of this document demonstrate: 1) How most of the soils in the Rogue Valley (Bear Creek Sub-Basin Area) are severely limited with respect to septic treatment and have other soil limitations such as severe shrink-swell characteristics and high water tables; 2) How dense rural and urban land uses, reliant on septic systems for sewage treatment, currently exist in many of these areas..."

The WTF moment in this is that no where in the country and certainly not in Oregon, could anyone have allowed a septic system on these types of soils for at least the last 20 years, if not longer.  These approvals are a clear violation of Oregon rule and provide an extraordinary example of how government can fall down on the job at taxpayer expense.  What motivates a government agency to violate its own rules?  I don't know the specific answer in this specific case but I'm sure we can speculate a little bit in the interest of once again highlighting motivations for action or inaction.

1. Button pushers on the outside:  Pressure that comes from outside of a regulatory agency is a potent motivator for public officials to approve something that ought not be approved in light of what the rules (which are just codified political winds) say.  This might be a motivation coming from elected types wanting to increase revenues to tax coffers or property rights activists threatening lawsuits or the nice older couple that just want to retire to the home they've been dreaming of all their lives.  
2. Rubber stampers on the inside:  Pressure that comes from within the regulatory agency is also a potent motivator and can be a lot more damaging and insidious.  This is pressure that comes from employees who want to look good to those folks higher in the food chain by avoiding controversy or property rights activists that are on staff and that tend to exert their own political will on their job or employees that don't have the huevos to stand up for what's right or worse, that don't care (For example, "One little house isn't going to make a difference."  A hundred houses and twenty years later, what have you got?)

So, in short, having septic systems located in soils that are severely limited for septic systems represents years and years of shoddy decision making that are now going to cost society (in this case residents of Jackson County) a huge amount of money.  WTF?   No wonder public employees have such a bad reputation.  The thorn is definitely in Oregon DEQ's side on this issue and this is not the only case of such short sighted decision making in Oregon.

*  My concern here is that we cannot, as a society, keep up with maintenance and scheduled upgrades to existing facilities, so why continue to add to society's financial burdens to install even more infrastructure that we can't afford to maintain (see the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card at:  http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/).