Sea rise complicates battle to rid county of septic tanks
In South Florida, septic tanks pollute, harm health and climate change worsens the problem. Miami-Dade has a little-known law to get rid of them, but the county is instead issuing permits for new tanks.
For parts of this summer, swaths of once-clear Biscayne Bay turned into a stew of exploding algae and decaying fish carcasses.
One big reason why is right under our yards: Miami-Dade’s 120,000plus septic tanks — an aging, leaky system for disposing of human waste that experts have pointed to as a public health and environmental hazard for bay waters since the 1950s. Yet, despite periodic calls as early as the 1960s for ambitious sewage system upgrades, the Herald found that the county has put only a small dent in the septic mess over the decades — and actually continues to issue permits for new ones.
Money, as usual, is the big stumbling block for a clearly defined problem with straightforward solutions.
Homeowners don’t like paying for it, and neither does the county. The most recent estimate for MiamiDade was $3.3 billion to get rid of most of them, and the cost per house can balloon far past the average $10,000 price tag. That’s why residents have been granted reprieves from orders to hook into nearby sewage lines for decades.
But now experts fear the county is paying the cost with declining water quality and rising sea levels that mean more polluting waste reaching waters. Some scientists believe sections of the bay may never recover.
“They’re like ticking bombs. It’s just a matter of time,” said Duanne Andrade, whose loan company is coming up with creative, affordable solutions in other parts of Florida.
The latest brain trust to tackle the Bay’s problem — the Biscayne Bay Task Force — specifically called out Miami-Dade’s septic tanks as a major problem, just like the reports and experts and task forces before it.
“Septic tanks are definitely part of the problem. The science is saying that. And you add sea level rise on top of that and now we have a big problem down the road,” said Irela Bagué, chair of the task force. “We’re running out of time.”
One solution, they said, could be a little-known law that’s been on the books in Miami-Dade since 1971, one that could have helped curtail the problem over the decades.
A DECADES-OLD PROBLEM
In 1971, the Federal Water Quality Administration (a precursor to the EPA) produced a major report with clear mandates for Miami-Dade, including installing water treatment plants and getting rid of septic tanks. The estimated cost of fixing all the county’s wastewater issues was north of a billion dollars.
The first finding of the report was that “Septic tanks, widely used in Dade County, are public health hazards and contribute to over-fertilization and algal nuisances in adjacent waterways.” At the time, there were about 143,000 in the county, and the feds said they all had to go.
The county’s part of the bargain, a Metro Dade Water Quality management plan, was produced in 1973. The plan was to get rid of all septic tanks by 1990. It even called for banning the use of septic tanks everywhere except single-family homes with lots greater than 15,000 square feet.
That didn’t happen.
Fifty years later, roughly 120,000 septic tanks still remain. And new ones are being permitted every year.
A 2018 report commissioned by the county tallied up the remaining residential tanks and found that switching just 83,000 of them to sewer would cost the county more than $3.3 billion dollars.
“Regardless of sea level rise we’ve got 120,000 septic tanks, a vast amount of them absolutely do not belong in South Florida and are polluting Biscayne
Bay,” said Aaron Stauber, a researcher with Miami Waterkeeper who spent the better part of a year researching the problems with septic tanks. “That was the conclusion in 1970, they don’t work in the conditions of South Florida.”
THE SEPTIC-TO-SEWER CONVERSION LAW
One thing that did happen after the feds came into town was a new law in Miami-Dade mandating that anyone abutting a sewer line get rid of their septic tank and connect to the county sewer line. To enforce that, the county sends out a letter, a notice of required connection also called a NORC. If the property owner won’t connect within 90 days, the county has the power to do it for them and charge the cost of installation as a lien on the property.
But Carlos Hernandez, chief of the waste and wastewater division at DERM, said that’s not how the law is enforced.
Hernandez said the county doesn’t go around looking for homes to connect. Usually, the county finds out about a septic home close to a sewer line when the homeowner tries to get a permit for something on their property. In that case, DERM often denies the permit until the home gets rid of its septic tank and connects to the sewer line, then it sends letters to all the neighbors ordering they do the same.
In 2018, the county changed the rule to give property owners a full year to switch to sewer instead of 90 days. Property owners often ask for longer, usually because they don’t have enough money on hand. The average cost for a homeowner to connect is anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000, plus a new monthly sewage bill.
If they need more time than that, they can go before the independent Environment Quality and Control Board. If the board determines the homeowner has no excuse not to connect, the county attorney can sue the homeowner into connecting to sewer.
Of the 120,000 septic tanks in Miami-Dade County, no one knows exactly how many are close enough to sewer lines to connect right now.
One common number tossed around is 12,000. DERM even uses it in presentations. But Hernandez said it’s an estimate from a 10-year-old study that considered only properties in unincorporated MiamiDade. Adding cities like Miami Gardens and Coral Gables could push that number much higher.
From January 2010 to the beginning of September, DERM records show, they have connected 436 residential properties to sewer, with another 538 properties pending connection. That time span includes years where DERM was negotiating a change to the code defining who exactly had to connect and didn’t issue NORCs.
A few years ago, Hernandez said, the county began asking municipalities to provide detailed maps showing which residents were connected to county water and sewer and how many were still on septic tanks. Today, they have every municipality except Homestead.
Once that data set is complete, Hernandez said, the county plans to do another survey and find out how many septic tanks are connectable. But even that number will still be an estimate, because the records identifying locations of septic tanks can be old or inaccurate.
“Those records are really, really old and really, really limited. There are cases where people are connected to sewer but aren’t paying or are paying and aren’t connected,” Hernandez said.
ROLE OF SEA RISE
Miami-Dade’s septic tanks have been overflowing during rainstorms for decades, long before sea level rise began. In a 1949 edition of LOOK magazine bought off eBay by Waterkeeper researcher Stauber, the author writes about watching septic tanks spill onto sidewalks and front lawns in Coconut Grove after heavy rain.
“Modern sewage systems are the exception rather than the rule in Florida. It is a region of privies and septic tanks — and worse,” he wrote.
Back in the 1950s, septic tanks were only required to have six inches of room to drain underneath them, and some of those septic tanks are still around. Now the rules call for two feet, although the county study on sea rise and septic tanks show that’s not enough to prevent serious pollution. Septic tanks are basically a box that holds human waste. Over time, the liquid seeps out of the box and trickles into the ground and the aquifer. If the groundwater is too high, the oncedry dirt gets soggy and doesn’t properly drain the waste. That can turn front lawns into stinky swamps or spill over into the bay.
The study found that about 58,000 septic tanks could be compromised in a heavy storm or wet year. By 2030, that number could jump to 67,000. Under average conditions today, the study also identified about 800 residential septic tanks that are already failing regularly.
After the county’s report was published in 2018, the commission asked the Water and Sewer Department to come up with an action plan to transition Miami-Dade to sewer. It still hasn’t been released.
Jennifer Messemer, spokesperson for the department, said the report is being finalized after some changes were requested by the mayor’s office.
ONE COUNTY
GETS CREATIVE
Septic tank woes aren’t a uniquely Miami-Dade problem. In the northern half of the state, they’re one of the leading pollution problems for the Florida Springs, prompting Tallahassee to create a revolving loan to help small cities switch from septic to sewer.
In Martin County, they leak into the Indian River Lagoon. But the county is pioneering a new idea to get its most vulnerable septic tanks onto sewer mains without charging residents more than they can handle.
The county identified the riskiest spots, about 500 houses, and installed the main pipes out to those homes. To help residents foot the bill, the county partnered with a non-profit lending company, the Solar Energy Loan Fund or SELF, to customize individual loans. The monthly payment is less than $85, and residents pay through their water bills.
“I’ve got people waiting in a queue for the financing. I think I’m going to have a run as soon as the Board of County Commissioners approves it. We are pretty excited about it,” said Samuel Amerson, utilities and solid waste director for Martin County.
In the rest of the state, getting the money to switch to sewer would require going to the bank for a loan. Bills to allow a popular — yet controversial — private program that offers loans to install solar or replace roofs to expand to cover septic-to-sewer conversion haven’t advanced in Tallahassee. But those options can price out lowerincome residents, which is the case for many of Miami-Dade’s septic tank owners.
NEW SEPTIC TANKS KEEP COMING
With no clear plan on how to get rid of old septic tanks, Miami-Dade is still allowing new ones to go into the ground every year. Of the 1,174 people who came to the board since 2013 to fight a septic tank mandate, a Waterkeeper review of the data found only 1 percent were rejected. Everyone else got extra time or permission to install a septic tank anyway.
“What DERM knows for a fact is that septic tanks that shouldn’t be there remain there contaminating the groundwater. That, to me, is kicking the can down the road,” Stauber said.
Part of the reason is the infrastructure still isn’t there. You can’t force a homeowner to connect to sewage in someplace like Pinecrest if there are no sewage pipes to connect to. Money is also a factor. Business owners, landlords and residents often plead with the board for exceptions or more time because they don’t have the cash needed to install a new tank — a multi-thousand dollar prospect.
That doesn’t mean the board isn’t trying to improve. When someone asks for permission to build a new septic tank these days, DERM asks landowners to use a more modern type of septic tank system that includes extra filtering and requires the permit seeker to build it a half-foot higher than the code calls for.
“In the last year we have not approved a standard septic system in any of those cases,” Hernandez said. “The days of allowing a standard drainage system in a concrete box are gone.”
The problem with the newer systems is they require electricity, which can be knocked out in a storm, and regular maintenance and inspections. That makes them a good bit pricier than your standard set-it-and-forget-it septic tank, which makes the hurdle for homeowners even higher.
And most of the time, those standard septic tanks are cheaper than a monthly sewer bill. For a home of less than 3,000 square feet, the average monthly sewer bill runs between $75 and $100. The main expense for septic tanks is pumping them out every couple of years, a quick, yet smelly, affair.
Last week, in a small pocket of unincorporated Dade two blocks north of the Miami River, 60-yearold Ray Alvarez had a team from AA ARON Super Rooter empty out the overflowing septic tank for his 1950s home. It took about an hour.
Alvarez, a former truck driver, said he wishes he could just connect to city sewer and stop worrying about the ancient septic tank is his backyard, but a few obstacles stand in his way: There are no pipes in his neighborhood to connect to, and he doesn’t have the cash.
“I don’t have $10,000,” he said. “If I had it, I would have done it. In a heartbeat.”
Instead, he forked over $255 to the septic company, which also told him high groundwater levels and years of use have taken a toll on his system. He needs a new drain field, a nearly $2,000 expense.
“I’m thinking about it,” he said.