County: Results of septic inspections startling

Last fall, Silver City resident Jeff Sugrue received a letter from Pennington County he had never seen before: an order to have his home’s septic system pumped and inspected.

A year later, those letters are no longer novel for rural county residents. Under the county’s 2010 septic ordinance, thousands of county residents are required to have their septic systems inspected at least once every six years.

Since last August, around 750 homes have received those letters from county informing them that it was their turn to inspect their systems.

County officials say the results of those inspections are startling: more than 150 violations ranging from broken baffles to sewage rising to the surface.

“We didn’t expect a lot of these leaking tanks,” said Brittani Molitor, the county’s water protection coordinator. (Rapid City Journal, 10/23/2011)

Read the rest of the article here