Septic Tank Maintenance

An interim study was performed which determined a need for several changes to improve our industry. A bill was introduced, HB2510, to effect those changes. This bill cleared all the obstacles until the very end and only needed approval in the Senate for final passage. That's when one Senator entered an amendment to allow homeowners to perform their own maintenance. Two other Senators then jumped on board from out of the blue.

Some people are saying that the bill should have been killed. Those people do not understand our political processes. Killing the bill wasn't in our hands, and would have been much worse than trying to address these issues and get the best compromised result we can get. That's what we did; we got the best result we could get.

We got 100% of what we were seeking in enforcement, and had to accept a compromise on homeowner maintenance – which was coming anyway. Did you get that? Homeowner maintenance was coming anyway, so it has now been limited by requiring training, limiting the time frames, and Better that we dealt with it now, than later when the complaints from dissatisfied homeowners grew to an insurmountable force.

So what do we do now? Now we do what was discussed at the TOWA business meeting in Waco. We watch the homeowners and turn in every transgression we can document. If we find enough, we will have the ability to turn back this change in homeowner maintenance.