Did local governments enforce septic tank permit conditions?
Local governments are responsible for enforcing septic tank permit conditions. Only 2 local governments we visited took a rigorous approach to enforcing the permit conditions. Of these, one had examined every septic tank in their municipality and the other was in the process of doing so. The other 8 had no enforcement program for old septic tanks and focused mainly on site assessments for new installations. One local government issued permits that required property owners to provide it with certificates verifying that maintenance had been undertaken on their septic tank. This local government had received about 2000 of these certificates (being for maintenance carried out over 2 years) but had not yet entered the data on its systems. Accordingly, it had not identified property owners who had not complied with this permit condition. Environmental health officers advised us that they did not expect property owners to have the knowledge or skills to monitor their septic tanks. However, th
