With the Representative Town Meeting's vote, an update to some forty-year old health regulations and ordinances will come to pass.

Health Director David Knauf said he was first charged with researching and drafting necessary amendments to Darien's health ordinances when he joined the town's Health Department back in 2008.

"Many of these have been on the books since 1969 or 1972," said Knauf.

The health ordinances and regulations under scrutiny were first published in Town Code in 1963; some were amended in 1972, and others in 2005.

Knauf says where the proposed amendments do not represent any significant changes in the way the town operates, certain policies—as written—are out of sync with current practices. Edits are necessary to help "simplify" the Health Department's role.

"These do not represent any significant changes in the way we do things, we just want to codify what we're doing," he said.

Changes fall broadly into two categories: clarifying clunky ordinances, and removing those ordinances too complicated to simplify, designating them regulations instead.

"Regulations tend to be broader in scope," said Knauf.

One clarification to a food establishments ordinance will write into law the department's recent requirement that food service providers post health inspection ratings within public view. Knauf says while approved last year, Town Counsel found "a couple of passages that need cleaning up."

A second tweak proposes to repeal portions of the existing garbage and rubbish regulations that relate to the department's inspection and licensing of garbage and septic trucks.

"We shouldn't be in the business of licensing vehicles," said Knauf.

Some ordinances pertaining to private sewage, sanitary sewers, well water and water supply are simply out of date, Knauf said. Standards have changed in the thirty-odd years since publication.

"An awful lot of policy has come about, and what we're doing is updating them to be equal to—or more than—what the code is at present," he said.

The Health Department proposes removing complex regulations pertaining to public pools, barbershops, hairdressing and cosmetology from the health ordinance section of the Town Code.

"The way they are written is so detailed and cumbersome," said Knauf. "In our estimation these things were misplaced."

A new regulation will enables the Health Department to direct a third party to carry out lead poisoning investigations.

Lead laws in Connecticut require local health departments to investigate incidents among children with elevated blood lead levels; recent changes to those laws significantly lower levels that require local intervention.

"We have an occasional lead poisoning in Darien, and the cases take an extraordinary amount of time. Quite frankly, we don't have the manpower or experience," said Knauf.

Parking regulations that somehow ended up with health ordinances also call for a cut and paste.

"For some reason they got mixed up when the Town Code was assembled," said Knauf.

Clamming regulations have yet to see Knauf's red pen. He said that he is looking at the ordinance with Town Counsel and that requisite updates are minor and have to do with the commercial aspects of shell fishing.

The Advisory Board of Health and Town Counsel have reviewed the proposed legislation changes, which subsequently received the Board of Selectmen's stamp of approval for recommendation to the RTM in early February.

The Rules Committee of the RTM, largely responsible for setting the full RTM's agenda, is due to discuss the Health Department proposal at its meeting Monday, Feb. 8.