We are Vashon Team Septic — also known as The Septic Sisters — and we’re here to help Vashon-Maury islanders build and maintain healthy septic systems.

You may have met us at a local public gathering, like the Vashon Home & Garden Fair or Strawberry Festival, or chatted with us on Facebook or email. For a year now, we’ve been helping neighbors get to the bottom of their septic quandaries.

We — Anne Atwell, Stephanie Begley, Jane Slade and Dione Mazzolini — are mostly volunteers, but our manager, Anne, is paid through a grant from Seattle King/County Public Health, which, along with Vashon’s Groundwater Protection Committee, conceived this project.

Our North Star has been to help you understand your septic systems. What is it you want to know?

Last year we posed that very question in a survey and received about 70 responses. Most were queries about septic basics: Where is it? How do I maintain it? How do I know if there’s a problem? What’s involved with remodeling a house, building an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), or selling a property with a septic system?

Noting the patterns, we created a website with answers to all these questions in layman’s terms. Our website, vashonteamseptic.org, is a work in progress. We’re revising it all the time to reflect what our neighbors most need to understand to design, install and take care of their septic systems.

For example, this winter, several people reached out to us during septic emergencies, desperate to talk to a service provider. In response, we revised our service provider contact page to show, at a glance, what expertise each provider offers, and we put a link to it on the home page.

This spring, we’re taking it a step further with “Septic 101” workshops. Led by the experts at Seattle/King County Public Health, these short classes will address many of the same questions, going into more depth than we do on our website. There will be two opportunities to attend a workshop:

• In person, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on March 18 at Vashon Library; and

• On Zoom, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on April 1.

You can register for either at vashonteamseptic.org.

While you’re there, please check out our website and let us know what else you’d like to see. You can also sign up for our mailing list, which goes out irregularly with information we think might matter to our Vashon friends.

Legal disclaimer: This project has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreement PC-01J89801-1 to the Washington State Department of Health. The contents of this document do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.