Freeland’s controversial $40 million sewer plan is becoming a campaign issue far beyond the shores of Holmes Harbor.

Jeff Lauderdale, a 2012 candidate for Island County commissioner, seized on the much beleaguered infrastructure upgrade during a recent speech to the South Whidbey Republican Women.

And Robin Adams, a candidate for Position 3 on the Langley City Council, pointed to the project as a lesson the city should heed on the expensive cost of expanding treatment facilities during a voters’ forum Monday in Langley.

Officials with the Freeland Water & Sewer District have long been talking about a multi-phase plan to install sewers to serve the South End’s commercial hub near Holmes Harbor. But the move to greatly expand the proposed sewer system outside Freeland’s downtown — and have residential property owners bear the burden of most of the costs of the project — has drawn harsh criticism from residents. It also inspired two residents, Marilynn Abrahamson and Lou Malzone, to challenge incumbent district commissioners Jim Short and Rocky Knickerbocker for their positions in a bid to take control of the district’s three-member board.

Last week in Useless Bay, Lauderdale told a gathering of the South Whidbey Republican Women that the Freeland sewer project was a “frightening example” of the loss of local control.

Lauderdale is challenging Democrat Helen Price Johnson, a supporter of the sewer project, for the District 1 seat on the county board of commissioners.

“It’s a serious issue,” Lauderdale said. “It’s come very dangerously close to hurting a lot of people in Freeland.”

He said the sewer proposal stemmed from top-down pressure from the state and Washington’s Growth Management Act.

Lauderdale attended the most recent meeting of the Freeland district, and recalled how its commissioners pointed to the GMA and the county’s land-use planning efforts as reasons why they had marched forward on the unpopular sewer project.

“Island County is being pushed and it ends up there, where the rubber meets the road,” he said. “They’re feeling compelled to do what is essentially the wrong thing.”

Lauderdale also noted that the debate over the sewer system has led to the vilification of septic systems, which are seen as a problem that needs to be solved.

“Quite frankly, I don’t subscribe to that,” he said. “They work remarkably well.”

Though there may be individual failures of septic systems here and there, Lauderdale said, “they are very robust systems and they can work forever if properly maintained and pumped out at regular intervals.”

“I think they are the ultimate recyclers,” he said, adding that 93 percent of the water that flows through a septic system seeps back into the ground.

Sewer treatment systems typically pump treated water back into Puget Sound, he said.

Lauderdale said he mentioned the Freeland sewer issue as an illustration of the shift in government control.

“We don’t have enough local decision-making anymore. Local government often just responds to top-down Olympia and Coupeville mandates. What we have now is basically automatic compliance and without any upward rhetoric to say, ‘Look, this doesn’t fit Island County.’

“I think that trend needs to be turned around,” Lauderdale said.

Adams, who is running for a nonpartisan position on the Langley council, issued a statement Monday during a voters’ forum that called for reform of Langley’s water and sewer rates.

Adams said the current rate structure does not encourage conservation, and mentioned the situation in Freeland when warning about the high cost of utility system upgrades.