b'C H A P T E R F O U RMrs. Kimball, each contributing their time and skills to protect the town and the harbor.Another relationship that had gelled, an inside one, was between Joan Kimball, Martha Stone, and Batch.Says Mrs. Kimball, Each of us did what we loved and had experience doing: Batchs negotiating skills, local contacts and knowledge as a realtor were of great benefit, as were Marthas outreach and organizational skills; I enjoyed the research, weighing pros and cons, and drafting the bylaw.Did the new regulation make a difference? Martha Stone took on the task of digging for answers. As soon as reports of septic-system inspections began coming in, she headed for the Board of Health to check the numbers. No wonder the Board was, in her word, alarmed.She says, Something like 14 percent had outright failed; sewage was running out in the yard. And sometimes it was up as high as 20 percent failed.It did not take authorities long in 1986 to see what the fall-out from the regulation amounted to. In the first six months, according to The Chronicle, of the 143 real estate transfers, 21 were found to have circumvented the regulation. That September, twelve more violations came to light. Two months later, The Chronicle reported an assertion from Board of Health members that some attorneys and real estate agents in town have been advising clients to ignore the regulation because it is unenforceable. During the spring of 1987, the board bore down on amending the rule to make it more watertight.Ever since pursuing that first initiative, the Friends enterprise has found far more than once that its ideas and projects do not always win unanimous approbation. Often enough, someone will barge into an FCW plan and charge it with, say, violating an individuals property rights. FCW directors have had to wear heavy-weather gear, while sharpening their understanding of all the nuts and bolts of issues. But even with the septic-system inspection regulation of the late Eighties, there was at least one gratification for the Friends. Within a few years of Chathams approving the rule, says Martha Stone,every town on the Cape had adopted our language almost verbatim.In the meantime, while the regulation was slowly taking root, within the Friends organization there had been a changing of the guard. At the end of March 1984, Joan Kimball reached a decision. Because she had school-age children at home and was taking two science courses at Wellesley College, she wrote fellow board members saying shed have to step down as president as of the annual meeting July 28. Her successor: Batch Batchelder.Another fundamental change occurred the next year at the 85 annual meeting, held July 29. What had been created as Friends of Stage Harbor Waterways was now to be given a more-encompassing name: Friends of Chatham53'