CENTRE — The Cherokee County Commission gave the County Health Department the tools it claimed it needed to clean up Weiss Lake eight months ago. So far, however, the resulting ordinance has not been enforced, Alabama's top health official said.

“This has taken longer than we would like, but we have taken steps to address it,” State Health Officer Dr. Donald Williamson told The Post late last week.

Williamson said he was recently made aware that at least one new position called for by the ordinance has gone unfilled for months since the ordinance was passed on April 9, 2012.

“We did not move as expeditiously on some of the applications as I would have liked,” Williamson said. “We have dispatched some additional staff from around the state to go through the backlog of applications.”

Williamson said he was not aware, exactly, of how much of a backlog actually existed. But he seemed to acknowledge the enormity of the task the Health Department faces in attempting to clean up and/or remove hundreds of potential sewage violators from the shores of the 30,200-acre, man-made reservoir.

“It [eliminating dumping violations] is such a daunting proposition that you can sometimes get paralyzed by the challenge,” Williamson said.

Earlier this year, County Commissioner Kimball Parker explained the need for the ordinance.

“The whole purpose was to try and get the lake cleaned up and the majority of the sewage going into the lake is from campers inside the flood easement, in my opinion,” Parker said in an article in The Post in April 2012. “No one had jurisdiction there, which is why the state Health Department needed us to pass an ordinance to give them some tools to be able to go into those areas and take care of those problems.”

The Commission worked for nearly three years with Williamson's office and Alabama Power to create a partnership with the primary goal of cleaning up Weiss Lake. Almost two years ago, during a gathering of local officials in Centre, Williamson said he intended to “plant a flag in the ground” as a show of his department's commitment to stopping illegal dumping.

“We are looking for the opportunity to begin this process in order to demonstrate that we are serious about this,” Williamson said in March 2011.

The primary tool Williamson said his department needed was an ordinance establishing procedures for the proper handling of sewage inside the Weiss flood easement, fines for failure to comply and the hiring of an enforcement officer to oversee the entire process. It is this new position that has gone unfilled since April.

Soon after, a lawyer for the Health Department announced an intended July 2012 start date for enforcement to begin. The run-up to implementation was also supposed to include agreement with the Commission on how officers hired and paid by the state would enforce the ordinance; publication of the proposed fees and rules; a chance for the public to comment on those rules; and a public education campaign to increase awareness and share information.

That multi-step process is still ongoing, according to Probate Judge Melvyn Salter.

Parker, an early supporter of the ordinance, made it clear he feels the time for action on enforcement has come and gone.

“We worked hard to pass that ordinance and we feel it is a good ordinance,” Parker said Friday. “We thought the Health Department was going to enforce it but that has not happened as quickly as everyone would like.”

Parker said he was relieved to hear Dr. Williamson has not forgotten about his pledge to the people of Cherokee County.

“I'm glad he has realized there is a problem, because we want Weiss Lake cleaned up,” Parker said. “We gave them the authority they said they needed, and we want them to step up and do their job.