Colton Masters, director of environmental health for the Mahoning County health department, explains the new Household Sewage Treatment System Operation and Maintenance program that will affect all septic system owners in the county in 2022. The slide in the photo explains some of the reasons for the new program. A fee will be charged for the service....Staff photo / Ed Runyan

AUSTINTOWN — The county health department will begin to roll out new requirements for all septic system owners in Mahoning County on Jan. 1.

Colton Masters of Mahoning County Public Health, formerly known as the Mahoning County Board of Health, knows that news is potentially concerning to the 17,000 county homeowners with a septic system, which accepts and treats

household sewage in areas without sewer systems.

“I know people are not all going to be happy,” he said.

Costs ranging from $30 to $125 per year are associated with the program. Other costs, such as those for having septic tanks pumped, also are possible.

But Masters told members of Mahoning County Public Health last week that septic owners also should consider that the new Home Septic Treatment System Operation and Maintenance program could prevent them from having to pay much more.

“Yes there is a fee associated with it. That’s what people are going to focus on primarily, but they need to look past that,” he said. “I need them to see more than just that fee. There are genuine benefits not just to the community, but to the people involved in this.”

A benefit to the user is that the system “will last longer if you take care of it. A lot of people don’t know what type of system they have, much less how to take care of it,” he said.

Benefits to the community include fewer failing septic systems with every owner owner under the program. He said failing septic systems “can be a bit of a problem for us, not just here in Mahoning County but across all of Ohio because of the age of systems.

“They don’t last forever. So this is a way we are going to find more of them, which will mean cleaner surface water. We’re going to clear that up so we don’t have as much contaminants going into surface water.”

The county is charging fees through the new program because of the expenses involved in running it.

For example, the cost just to mail all of the notifications to septic owners will be about $100,000 per year, Masters said. Other county costs include hiring a clerk to send the mailings and increasing staff to carry out duties such as inspections, testing and answering questions.

CAN BE A MESS

In a presentation, Masters showed the yard of a home with a failed septic system. The ground showed dark, wet areas where “septage,” which is wastewater from the septic system, was not being treated adequately and was coming to the surface.

It is the same substance that sometimes travels from the septic system to streams, ditches and other water sources and causes contamination.

“Sometimes that septage is washed into a stream, a creek. It will work its way into a water source,” he said.

Masters scheduled two public hearings last week, one in Springfield Township and one at the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center in Canfield — but no one attended either session. Masters said additional outreach will be held to get the word out about the program, which is mandated by Ohio law for every county in the state.

“The board of health is mandated to do it,” Ryan Tekac, Mahoning County health commissioner, told the board during Masters’ presentation. “It has to be in place.” Tekac was part of the planning for the rollout of the new program when he was environmental health director before he became health commissioner two years ago. Masters is now the environmental health director.

FOUR PHASES

The new program will roll out in four phases throughout 2022, starting with the four northern-tier townships — Austintown, Jackson, Milton and Coitsville — as well as for a small number of septic owners in Youngstown, Struthers and Campbell. They will begin receiving notifications in the mail from the health department soon after Jan. 1 regarding the program.

Each homeowner will have 30 days to respond to the mailing and submit payment. There are other measures in place, such as certified letters and late fees involved.

The rollout will begin April 1 for the townships of Boardman, Canfield, Poland and Ellsworth. On July 1, it will roll out in the townships of Berlin, Smith, Goshen and Green. The final two townships on Oct. 1 will be Beaver and Springfield, the two townships with the most septic systems, 2,018 and 2,072, respectively.

Canfield Township has the third most at 1,826; Smith is fourth at 1,474; and Austintown is fifth at 1,442. Youngstown has only 26, but the health department manages those systems as well, by agreement with the city. Boardman Township has only 59, according to Masters’ presentation.

THREE TYPES

There are three types of septic systems under the rules, and the cost will be $30 per year for the typical septic-tank-to-leachfield type of system, which is the most common type. That type of system costs $90 once every three years, plus the cost of pumping a tank, which is recommended every three to five years and costs around $300 each time, Masters said.

The second level is for systems with more mechanical parts and costs $40 per year and requires the owner to have routine maintenance.

The third level is for more sophisticated systems that discharge wastewater off of owners’ property, such as into a ditch. Those already require an annual testing to make sure it’s not discharging contaminated water into streams and other water sources. If they work properly, the discharged water is “as clean or cleaner than rain water,” Masters said.

The cost for this type of system is $125 per year. Its cost is higher because it requires annual testing. The county will perform the testing as part of the $125 fee. County sanitarians will collect the sample, perform the testing and provide the results.

Masters said a big part of instituting the operation and maintenance program is educating septic system owners about how their system works and what is needed to maintain it.

“I have talked to a lot of people, even in my own family who have no idea where their leach field is,” Masters said. “I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so you drove all over the yard,” he said.

“So where is your leach field? I don’t know. That’s a problem,” he said.

PROLONGED LIFE

Under the operation and maintenance program, owners will have the opportunity to talk to septic pumpers to discuss what steps the owner should take to prolong the life of their septic system and help it run better. “That’s going to help the homeowner in the long run,” Masters said.

“The systems are not cheap, so if you can get an extra five or six years out of the system, that is a considerable amount of investment in this,” Masters said. The life span of a “general septic-tank-to-leachfied” system is about 20 to 30 years “if you maintain it,” Masters said.

He said the health department gets calls from people who are upset if they find out their 10-year-old septic system is not working properly. He said one of the keys to avoiding that is having the septic tanks pumped out periodically.

Tekac said his grandparents lived on a farm in Coitsville Township and had not had it pumped in a while, so he convinced his grandparents to have it done. He said the system was clogged with solids in the tank. His aunt and uncle later moved into his grandparents’ house — and they still use that same system today.

“But they pump it every year,” he said. “That system is probably well over 30 years old. If you maintain the system, it will last.”

The law requires that every system in the county participate in the system, Masters said. The county has files documenting most of the systems in the county, so those will be part of the mailings right away.

“That’s not saying we know of every system in the county,” Masters said. “It’s saying when we find them and inventory them or inspect them or review them, they also have to be brought into this.”

When a home is sold, that triggers an inspection of the septic system, he said.

“Mahoning County has a little over 17,000 systems that we are aware of,” Masters said. “With this program, we will find systems we never knew were there. If you go back 40 to 50 years, there were no regulations on them. We know a lot of people ran straight pipes right out to the ditch or right to a waterway, and that is what we are going to continue to find. Right now the engineer’s office finds them on a regular basis. They call us all the time about that,” he said.

Masters said one way to look at the cost of the new program is to compare it to having a sewer system.

The cost of sewers is around $1,600 per year, but he estimates the total cost to operate the most common type of septic system in the county under the new program is $146 per year. Part of that calculation is the cost of pumping the tanks.

He said the cost to replace the septic system if it fails because it’s not maintained could be $20,000, so maintaining it now could be a big savings.

erunyan@vindy.com