Can I use a septic holding tank on my BC property?

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Only with a health officer's permit, given when a tank will do and won't cause a health hazard; the owner keeps it pumped to its maintenance plan and keeps the records. A holding tank stores a building's sewage until a truck takes it away for treatment. Look up the address or PID on PlaceDossier to see the record for that lot. What it is: A holding tank is a watertight container that holds domestic sewage until it is removed for treatment. The regulation's "sewerage system" doesn't include a holding tank or a privy, so a holding tank has its own part of the regulation (Sewerage System Regulation ss. 1, 2 (a), Part 2). Where sewage may go: The owner of every parcel with a building must see that its sewage goes to a public sewer, a holding tank built and kept to Part 2, or a sewerage system built and kept to Part 3, and that it causes no health hazard (s. 3 (1)). The permit: No one may build a holding tank without a permit. The application goes to a health officer with a $400 fee, the type of building it will serve, a description of the tank and a proposed maintenance plan (s. 4 (1), (2)). The health officer may issue it only if satisfied that a holding tank is adequate for the building's sewage and, with the maintenance plan followed, won't cause a health hazard (s. 4 (3) (b)). Often a last choice: Interior Health's guide says its officers weigh the other options, and that a holding tank is typically not acceptable where onsite treatment or a community sewer is available. The health authorities' guides also note that a local or regional government may have a bylaw that prohibits or regulates holding tanks (Interior Health, September 2023; Northern Health, May 2017). Away from the well: A holding tank must sit at least 15 m from a well that supplies a domestic water system, unless a hydrogeology professional advises in writing, before it's built, that closer won't likely cause a health hazard; the advice goes to a health officer (s. 3.1). Interior Health's guide adds 15 m from a lake, river or other surface source of drinking water and 1 m from the lot line. Size and alarms: Interior Health's guide sizes a tank for at least seven days of the home's design flow and never under 4,900 litres: 9,100 litres for three bedrooms. Island Health's policy asks for about ten days and two alarms, at 75% and 90% full, where they will be seen. Each health authority sets its own conditions on the permit (our reading). Keeping it: The owner must have the tank maintained to the maintenance plan given with the application, as changed by any condition on the permit, and must keep records of that maintenance (s. 5). Island Health's policy has the records kept as a logbook: what was pumped, the water used, the date, the hauler and where the sewage went. When it goes wrong: A health officer may order a building connected to a public sewer, to a holding tank or a sewerage system, or a holding tank altered or repaired (s. 11). Using a holding tank with no permit, or letting one cause a health hazard, is an offence (s. 12 (c), (e)). What a report shows: A report screens the room on the lot for a septic field against the recorded wells, mapped water and the lot line, and says where a community sewer is mapped. Holding tanks aren't on any open map, so it can't say whether a lot has one. What it means for a buyer: A holding tank costs a pump-out every time it fills, for as long as the house is used, and a tank with no permit or no records is a question for the seller and the health authority. Ask whether the lot could take a septic field instead, and what that would take (our reading).

Can I use a septic holding tank on my BC property?

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