Septic tank inspections

wazzoraybelle

Nermal wrote: »

It's much cheaper to treat sewage to the proper standard in urban areas. Economies of scale apply. So what you're asking for is another transfer to rural areas. You choose to live in the country, that's fine. But you should bear the cost of your decision.

Do you know what you are talking about??
There is no cost to the taxpayer for sewage treatment in rural areas, because the homeowners pay for the installation and management of they're own septic systems. Rural dwellers do and always have borne the cost of their decision. What they also bear is the cost through taxation of urban sewage treatment, urban street lighting, potable water treatment and infrastructure for urban areas.

So maybe it's time the urban dweller bears the cost of their decision to live in such an area, pay for all of these services directly and stop being a burden on us country dwellers.

xsao

wazzoraybelle wrote: »

From rte news:
There is to be no inspection charges for septic tanks under new plans being drawn up by Government, Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has said.
However, from 2012 the owners of homes with septic tanks will have to pay a "very modest" registration charge when registering their tank with the authorities, according to Mr Hogan.
This fee would not have to be paid every year, but would have to be paid every few years, the minister's spokesman said.
However, she would not be drawn on what the fee would be or how often it would have to be paid.
From 2013, inspectors from local authorities will then come out and inspect tanks to ensure they comply with rules and standards to be agreed between Government and the Environmental Protection Agency.
If a tank does not meet the standards, it will be the responsibility of its owner to carry out work on it and cover the cost of that work, the minister said.
Ireland is under pressure from the European authorities to comply with a European Court of Justice ruling, by bringing in measures to improve ground water quality.

Right! how is this not an inspection fee? you register your septic tank every couple of years? come on, how stupid do they think we are!

Wheither it is called a registration fee or an inspection fee or any other fancy name it is sill money out of the same pocket going to local authorities who have proven time and time again that they masters at wasting money.
What happens if a householder cannot afford to pay for remedial works if the tanks are found to be defective? eg an old age pensioner.

xsao

wazzoraybelle wrote: »

Do you know what you are talking about??
There is no cost to the taxpayer for sewage treatment in rural areas, because the homeowners pay for the installation and management of they're own septic systems. Rural dwellers do and always have borne the cost of their decision. What they also bear is the cost through taxation of urban sewage treatment, urban street lighting, potable water treatment and infrastructure for urban areas.

So maybe it's time the urban dweller bears the cost of their decision to live in such an area, pay for all of these services directly and stop being a burden on us country dwellers.

and so say all of us (rural dewllers)

Unrealistic

TheMaster wrote: »

This is similar to putting your car in for an NCT, we all know it's a good idea to test these things but get frustrated when it becomes a money making operation!!!!

Good comparison. Pushing it further it's the equivalent to a rural dweller having to pay to buy and maintain a car and then being asked to pay taxes for inspection of it while urban dwellers get public transport without even having to pay a fare.

Unrealistic

Nermal wrote: »

It's much cheaper to treat sewage to the proper standard in urban areas. Economies of scale apply. So what you're asking for is another transfer to rural areas. You choose to live in the country, that's fine. But you should bear the cost of your decision.

COST OF SEWERAGE PROVISION
1) Initial system set-up
RURAL DWELLER - paid by self (€5,000-€10,000)
URBAN DWELLER - paid by exchequer
2) Ongoing maintenance
RURAL DWELLER - paid by self (€200-€300 every year or two for pumping)
URBAN DWELLER - paid by exchequer
3) Capital maintenance
RURAL DWELLER - paid by self (€5,000-€10,000 after 20 years?)
URBAN DWELLER - paid by exchequer

So the rural dweller is paying between €350 and €800 per annum on average to provide himself with a sewerage service and the urban dweller pays zero directly and has his sewerage service funded by a tax on everyone, rural and urban. So in which direction is the transfer you are talking about really going? Not in the direction you seem to think.

Solidchrome

What hasnt been addressed is how Minister Phil Hogan expects home owners to pay, what could possibly be, thousands of euros in remedial work.

I cannot work due to illness and the wife begins an internship next week as finding a job is a joke over here in Co Mayo. I am trying to support a family on social welfare and have no savings. Where the hell does the Minister expect me to get thousands of euros from?? If I cant pay to have any remedial work done what then? Court? That would be a laugh because I cant afford to pay fines. Would I be forced to sell my home to pay for the fines? Over my dead body.

The government receives money from the EU to implement and maintain urban sewage schemes but we are expected to pay for all this ourselves- how is that fair? Why was there no mention of grants or finiancial aid?

I'm not only worried for myself but what of older people who cant afford repairs? There seems to have been no consideration at all about how this is going to be funded and maintained.

astrofool

Solidchrome wrote: »

What hasnt been addressed is how Minister Phil Hogan expects home owners to pay, what could possibly be, thousands of euros in remedial work.

I cannot work due to illness and the wife begins an internship next week as finding a job is a joke over here in Co Mayo. I am trying to support a family on social welfare and have no savings. Where the hell does the Minister expect me to get thousands of euros from?? If I cant pay to have any remedial work done what then? Court? That would be a laugh because I cant afford to pay fines. Would I be forced to sell my home to pay for the fines? Over my dead body.

The government receives money from the EU to implement and maintain urban sewage schemes but we are expected to pay for all this ourselves- how is that fair? Why was there no mention of grants or finiancial aid?

I'm not only worried for myself but what of older people who cant afford repairs? There seems to have been no consideration at all about how this is going to be funded and maintained.

Why should he be the state be paying for remedial work to stop your house from polluting the environment?

Now, the cost of the inspection has been set too high, but septic tanks in general do need to be inspected, as the state of a lot of them is very very bad.

How can you argue for the right to pollute the groundwater without inspections occurring, and being forced to bring your own sewage system up to code?

And, right, for the people arguing about the rural people and urban people bearing the burden of their own costs on the state, off you go, rural dwellers per head cost the state a lot more than urban dwellers, this information is freely available, but please don't make me paste the let me google that for you link.

Solitaire

No insult intended to anyone; just a plea for reason.

astrofool wrote: »

Why should he be the state be paying for remedial work to stop your house from polluting the environment?

Because no-one else will? And because putting in new ones would be cheaper than sticking a good 500,000 Irishmen in jail and their kids into care?

How many of the 400,000+ households and 1,000,000+ people affected will be able to pay thousands of Euro extra per annum on septic tank taxes, new carbon taxes, water taxes and property taxes on top of all their existing tax burdens? Very few could manage it without extraordinary financial burden, and will help recreate the unstable debt culture we're trying to get out of. But a good chunk of that 400,000+ will not have a single resident capable of paying for the new taxes, let alone a new septic tank. Is our wonderful government going to build all the jails and care homes we'd need to incarcerate perhaps a quarter of a million people - a good 6% of our entire population - for non-payment of taxes that will result from the changes to rural taxation about to happen courtesy of the EU?

These are very big numbers we're dealing with; if you middle-class townies (the poorer ones aren't nearly as deluded ) are thinking "jaesus it ain't our problem, them rich culchies should stop moaning about giving some of their savings to pay for their mess, its not like there's many people on them septic tanks really is there?" then you really need an almighty reality check. There's nearly a third of the country, well over a million people, stuck with this new charge. And we're all too aware of the damage that failed sewage systems can cause to land, nature and our own water supplies; far more than oblivious townies! We don't want to bury the issue; we simply don't have the money to pay to remedy it ourselves, and this septic tank business is madness unless our glorious leaders suddenly regain sanity and insulate the countless poor rural dwellers against financial ruination from trying to get their outdated systems back up to code,which they would do anyway if they had the money in the first place! So the "aw rich culchies don't want to pay their way" argument doesn't only fail to hold any water; its also a massive insult.

As for the ground water and nature issues: I doubt I live in the only area thus affected - far from it! - but I live quite near a fairly infamous company that has a million bribe-coated fingers performing anal sex with a million greedy, corrupt environmental agencies and assorted quangos. They have an environmental policy best described as "scorched earth" - primarily because that's all that is left after some highly toxic runoff leaks out of the processing plant and runs across nearby grass areas - or nearby farmland. And that's a near-daily occurrence. And the one thing you can guarantee is that the authorities will turn a blind eye to it all. This crap is sinking into the nearby land, water table and ground water, and the government says its okay and then turns around and demands ELODS OF EMONEYS!! (wonder of anyone remembers where that's from ) from all rural dwellers? I know the EU is to blame for that bit, but still, to anyone living in a similarly affected area this new inspections lark is the most ludicrously goppingly drooling insane thing in the history of the universe.

Unrealistic

astrofool wrote: »

Why should he be the state be paying for remedial work to stop your house from polluting the environment.

No argument there.

astrofool wrote: »

Now, the cost of the inspection has been set too high, but septic tanks in general do need to be inspected, as the state of a lot of them is very very bad.

Is it? How do you know? I think it's worth repeating a point raised earlier that in the case of the problem in Galway the year before last the most convincing explanation lays the blame at the door of private septic tanks, farming processes and local authority schemes but with local authorities being by far the biggest contributor.

astrofool wrote: »

How can you argue for the right to pollute the groundwater without inspections occurring, and being forced to bring your own sewage system up to code?

Logically those who can pay should pay. Those who can't, if we were to apply the harshest measures, would be fined to the point where they would lose their homes to pay for it but then the burden of housing them would likely fall on the state anyway so it might be a false economy.

astrofool wrote: »

And, right, for the people arguing about the rural people and urban people bearing the burden of their own costs on the state, off you go, rural dwellers per head cost the state a lot more than urban dwellers, this information is freely available, but please don't make me paste the let me google that for you link.

That's a very sanctimonious statement. I can understand the google link comment when someone is asking for the phone number of their local Pizza Hut but when you are making a blanket statement like the one you make about rural dwellers costing the state more than urban dwellers it would be good manners to link to the source if it is 'freely available'.

It would be interesting to see that definition of urban and rural dwellers in whatever source you are referring to and what is defined as state expenditure benefiting one or the other. For example, on the designation side would it just refer to the Northwest Region and lump Sligo, Letterkenny and countless other towns with sewerage systems into the 'rural' category or is it more nuanced? In terms of expenditure is it just social welfare payments or social welfare payments plus local authority expenditure that gets counted or does it take into account indirect transfers like locating large public sector employers in urban areas as an indirect economic subsidy to those areas?

wazzoraybelle

astrofool wrote: »

And, right, for the people arguing about the rural people and urban people bearing the burden of their own costs on the state, off you go, rural dwellers per head cost the state a lot more than urban dwellers, this information is freely available, but please don't make me paste the let me google that for you link.

I have been looking for a while now for some information relating to this and have found none relating to ireland, Neither have I found any info that suggests
any government spends more on rural dwellers than their urban counterparts.

I have read that in The US the government spent 4,800$ per capita on rural dwellers and 5,300$ on urban dwellers ( figures for the year 1997).

And reported on the BBC just a couple of days ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14780858

So if you could link to some freely available information I'd be very interested to read it.

questionmark?

Some people are likely to resist the inspections. What gives inspectors the right to enter private property? If the householder refuses permission to enter will they have to go to court to gain a warrent?
Is it illegal for a householder to say they live a natural life style and go in a hole in the ground and dont use any chemicals and use rain water to wash their clothes. I may sound a little out there but somebody is going to use that argument.

Victor

questionmark? wrote: »

Some people are likely to resist the inspections. What gives inspectors the right to enter private property? If the householder refuses permission to enter will they have to go to court to gain a warrent?

I'm sure that will be dealt with by the legislation that creates the charge.

dev100

How does a civil servant/engineer inspect a septic tank? Lift the cover peer in and tick okay in their inspection book? Whats lifting the lid goin to tell him or her ?

Victor

I imagine there are a few tests that can be done.

1. Dye test to check that the (at least some of) sewage from the property is actually going to the septic tank.
2. Test the ground around the septic tank for evidence of leakage, e.g coliform bacteria, chlorine, urea or phosphate tests.
3. Test the ground awat from the septic tank for evidence of leakage.
4. Check the basic design
5. Check the water table level.