Septic debate reveals the gap between economic classes

Jeff Green | Apr 06, 2017

Septic systems are as much of a defining characteristic of rural areas as pickup trucks, fishing rods, beaver dams, and rubber boots in the springtime.

Urban residents can remain blissfully unaware of what happens once everything is flushed down the toilet or the sink, but not so in the countryside. One way or another, our human waste must be dealt with on our own land, and that costs money and requires due diligence.

A proposal to establish a mandatory septic inspection regime has now been deferred in Central Frontenac, and a proposal to explore the issue has been pulled from debate in South Frontenac just this week.

The idea is supported and has been pushed mostly by lake associations on behalf of their members. They see mandatory assessments of septic systems as one of the key factors in keeping lakes healthy.

The opposition to these mandatory inspections comes from concerns about the potential cost of replacing septic systems, which is the worst case scenario. Property owners of limited means, most of whom live on back lots or older former farm properties, could be hit with punitive costs, $10,000 or more, if their systems fail an inspection, money they don’t necessarily have.

A mandatory inspection system has to treat everyone in the same way. You can’t exactly ask a homeowner what their annual income is before inspecting their system and whoever is doing the assessment needs to treat every system the same way.
Nobody wants to have a faulty septic system, but what the resistance to mandatory inspections has revealed is that, particularly in Central Frontenac, a lot of people are afraid their system is lacking and since they are already struggling to pay ever increasing taxes and electricity and fuel costs, they can’t afford an unexpected large bill.

Census information bears this out. The average income of permanent residents, particularly in Central and North Frontenac is way below the provincial average. With the exception of the growth area of South Frontenac, the so-called bedroom communities within a short distance of the City, there is a high percentage of the population in Frontenac County who struggle to keep their bills paid and maintain their only real asset, their homes, in a reasonable state of repair.

The irony is, and this is what advocates of the mandatory system point out, that by taking inexpensive measures before a system fails, homeowners can save their systems before they need to be replaced.

In Central Frontenac, the matter was sent back to committee, partly so the community can come up with a plan to deal with the fallout for people who receive orders to replace their system but don’t have access to the necessary funds.

We have seen more letters about this in recent weeks than we normally see about a local political issue, for a number of reasons. Those who support the inspection have, for the most part, been working on this issue for years. They see the current voluntary inspection system that targets different lakes each year, as a doomed system. Property owners who are unwilling or unable to keep their systems up or replace them are the ones who refuse the inspections.

There are those who oppose mandatory inspections on political grounds, seeing it as a government imposition on private land, and there are others who oppose it because they think it will push vulnerable people out of their homes.

This leaves politicians in between of two opposing forces. Do they do the right thing to protect the land and the water, or do they do right by ratepayers who are already struggling to pay their tax bills in the first place. To find a middle path can be complicated. How much money does the township, which is already struggling financially, need to put aside to protect the vulnerable from these potential costs in order to satisfy the legitimate concerns of lake associations and others that septic systems aren’t leaching phosphates into the lakes and watersheds. How will the system be managed? What role will the septic pumpers play in policing the system?

The devil really is in the details if local townships want to deal with this issue, and they might be wise to wait until the province weighs in on the matter, which might happen later this year.

The reality that this whole debate has brought to the surface is one that is usually kept under wraps, the often extreme income gap between the haves and have-nots in Frontenac County.

We do a better job, maybe because our communities are small and we all rub shoulders at local stores or waste sites or public gatherings, of inter-mingling between the poor and the wealthy, than they do in cities where people remain cloistered in their own neighbourhoods.

From time to time, however,  the tensions do come to the surface and in order to deal with them we all need to listen carefully, respectfully, to each other.