Short Run to the Sea: Smart Septic Use Saves Money

Bullwings: Orcas Issues is proud to collaborate with the Stewardship Network of the San Juans to bring its series, “A Short Run to the Sea” to our readers.

We will reproduce daily articles from the series created and published on Stewardship Connections, an electronic publication of the San Juan County Marine Resources Committee and Lead Entity for Salmon Recovery.

Smart Septic Use Saves Money

Careful product choices and just using less can protect your septic system, your wallet and our rivers

by Robin Jacobson

While living on a small farm in Oregon, we discovered that it can be really expensive and, to put it mildly, strongly odiferous to learn the hard way about septic tank maintenance.  We had recently purchased the property from a nice family with five children who, as we learned after two gardens, a lawn and a goat pasture had to be dug up, had never tested or pumped out their septic tank in eight years.  And they had apparently thrown anything and everything down it, according to the brave man who dug the trench and called out his increasingly interesting discoveries to us.  This followed the meltdown of the home’s furnace after its filter had also not been touched in eight years.  But that’s another story.  This story is about a short run to the sea from a home septic system.

Buying an undeveloped waterfront parcel on San Juan Island in 1998 gave us the chance to start fresh (literally) and make good on the promise that we would never ignore a septic system’s needs and that we would always be good stewards of the land and sea.  We had a state-of-the-art septic system designed and built. Its design was actually more intricate than our house plans.  We never put weird stuff down it and we started paying closer attention to ingredients in household products that looked benign at first glance.  Truthfully, we didn’t know all of the details in 1998, but we knew that things like grease, liquid floor wax and many household chemicals would hurt the system, and weren’t treated by the system either. The bad stuff just passed through to the environment.

Over the years we became more knowledgeable about what is actually in commonly used laundry detergent, shampoo and kitchen cleaners.  We were realistic in saying we were the kind of consumers who would “use less” and “buy with a conscience” more than “do without” in the cleaning agents department.  So we used less, a lot less.  We discovered our clothes washed up just as clean, our hair felt just as fresh and the kitchen still sparkled.  That’s another thing.  If you scrub the whole kitchen less often, you use less chemicals and have more time for the rest of your life.  Like having fun outdoors.

We have lived on this land for ten years now, a family of three with lots of overnight guests.  That’s tons of shampooing and loads of laundry.  But no septic pumping yet.  When we had the tank inspected recently, we were pleased to learn that we were only approaching a level that would trigger a recommendation to pump.  We’ve been told that the average family of our size will need to pump a 1,000 gallon tank every 3.7 years.  We are working toward 11 years.  We will get it pumped soon.  It won’t be cheap.  But other families putting more grease, household chemicals and  the surfactants found in soaps and detergents down the drain, will be paying that pumping fee two to three times more often.

It just makes sense all-around to be kind to your septic system and put less “goo” down the pipes.  Inspections are required  because they are vital and the stakes are high.  Tanks that leak or back up cause havoc to the earth and to your pocket book.  And those chemicals leaching into the ground are taking just a short run to the sea.

For the full series of articles, go to www.shortruntothesea.org

The San Juan Marine Resources Committee (MRC) was started in 1996 as a grassroots effort to establish local management of marine resources.  It was the prototype for the creation of a federally sponsored network of seven MRCs working in northern Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  The MRCs are supported by federal funding through the Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Initiative.

The “Short Run to the Sea” campaign has been supported by the Education, Communication and Outreach Network (ECONet) of the Puget Sound Partnership.