‘It’s not an inexpensive replacement’: City explores incentives for switch from septic tanks to sewer

About 400 relics sit beneath Spokane’s surface. But don’t go digging for them.

Though long discouraged, hundreds of septic tanks are still in use throughout the city of Spokane, where officials fear they pose a risk to pollute the source of drinking water for the city and its neighbors.

With that in mind, city officials are developing a program that could offer financial incentives to property owners who make the transition from septic to sewer.

The city is considering offering low-interest loans and other forms of assistance to property owners who connect to the sewer system.

The city owns the main sewer line, but it’s up to individual businesses and property owners to hook into it – a project that can cost thousands of dollars.

Under the program city officials are mulling, a loan would be repaid through the property owner’s existing utility bills and backed up with a lien on the property, according to Scott Simmons, the city’s public works director.

The program could also help residents whose sewer connections exist but are failing, often ravaged by the root systems of nearby trees.

“It’s not an inexpensive replacement,” Simmons said.

Although the vast majority of the city’s population linked to its sewer system long ago, about 400 active septic tanks and cesspools are still resting above the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.

The city has worked in the past to encourage its residents and businesses to connect to the sewer system. The holdouts who haven’t connected often face challenges in hooking up the city’s sewer system, according to Marlene Feist, a city spokeswoman.

Though relatively rare in Spokane, septic systems are common throughout the country. More than 1 in 5 households relies on one in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

While septic systems in rural, less-populated areas pose little risk to drinking water, the EPA says they’re not a great fit for urban areas, where there is not enough soil to filter harmful pathogens that can leach into drinking water.

There are even a handful of cesspools left in the city.

The city hopes to have the program’s details ironed out so it can launch in 2021.

Spokane County has a sewer expansion program that dates to 1980. The county requires properties to connect to the sewer line within a year of its installation nearby.