Septic tank charges

murphaph · 30-01-2012 10:38pm

Solidchrome wrote: »

So you are saying that not having a basic water/sewage system half a mile outside a village is acceptable in the 21st century? I says it not and its retarded.

FFS where do we stop in that case? How far out from a rural village do YOU think we should lay pipes for water and sewage?

Why not lay pipes along EVERY lane and boreen? Why not add footpaths and streetlighting too? Where do we stop with the urbanisation of the countryside?

robd · 30-01-2012 11:13pm

Oh what a load of crap this thread is !!!

What do septic tank charges have to do with the "Irish Economy"?
Pretty off topic if you ask me.

I hate the way disagreeing with the poor ecology of building one off houses and associated works along every R road in the country makes you anti-rural in the eyes of "one off housing" dwellers. The reality is we should be preserving the rural amenity as rural. Bull doze the lot of them if you ask me.

murphaph · 30-01-2012 11:26pm

robd wrote: »

Bull doze the lot of them if you ask me.

Might yet begin to happen if and when the site tax is brought in. People will leave rural Ireland en masse over the coming years as the largely unsustainable nature of this way of life begins to sink in (very few people can genuinely work from home): huge numbers of rural dwellers will have been involved in trades associated with building. These guys are the most badly hit by the recession and will be off to Canada etc. as social welfare cuts begin to bite and site taxes come in.

The decision will be to pay site taxes on a property that is nowhere near any employment or to abandon the property and return the land to agriculture. Farmers that cleaned up selling sites might be able to get them back for little or nothing.

Same will happen to the ghost estates in areas with little or no employment prospects.

n97 mini · 30-01-2012 11:28pm

MYOB wrote: »

I suspect its actually a village in the eyes everyone but those who live there.

People in Ireland seem to assume that having a SuperValu and a secondary school makes their village a "town"

And then they start expecting a bus service, and if it's in Kerry, a hospital and a bypass.

ardmacha · 31-01-2012 12:35am

huge numbers of rural dwellers will have been involved in trades associated with building

.

Some of them even work with the public service, making them doubly repulsive.

Solidchrome · 31-01-2012 10:13am

You fine gael employees really spout aload of complete nonsense. Your rhetoric is the complete opposite of the majority of public opinion and you really need to stop cruising boards.ie in an attempt to manipulate the publics' point of view.

wiseguy · 31-01-2012 11:54am

ardmacha wrote: »

.

Some of them even work with the public service, making them doubly repulsive.

Hence why we need to round up all of these people, sow a star on their sleeve and send them into a concentration ghetto where the government "might" manage to provide some services for them. /sarcasm aimed at n97

Scofflaw · 31-01-2012 12:05pm

bbsrs wrote: »

Correct, I could have, anyways with regards to water, I'm quiet happy to pay for my decisions but to be charged rates for a service I completely installed and maintain myself doesn't seem fair to me .

The basis of payment is that in order to prevent pollution from badly maintained septic tanks, septic tanks need to be inspected - and in turn, that means they need to be registered.

Yes, that always seems unfair to anyone who maintains their tank in proper condition, but not everyone does.

cordially,
Scofflaw

antoobrien · 31-01-2012 12:21pm

Scofflaw wrote: »

The basis of payment is that in order to prevent pollution from badly maintained septic tanks, septic tanks need to be inspected - and in turn, that means they need to be registered.

Grand, so anybody with PP from the 60's or so on should be exempt as it'll be part of their PP record.

MYOB wrote: »

That we have undersized villages where we should have towns is yet another symptom of the one-off housing blight.

There are very few "new" villages in this country, any knew ones tend to be clustered around existing population centers and not "greenfield sites" and their existence are not responsible for any perceived "one off" boom.

Most of the villages that are in existence are there for a long time and 100-150 years ago had significantly higher populations with about the same number of houses. This can be seen in my own village (which is now bordering the Galway city limits. The parish record indicate that there were well over a thousand people living there in the past. What we have now is about the same, but the old houses are long since gone - some are still visible in ruins, most are knocked. Does the fact that there have been 2/3 new houses a year built in this area over the past 20 years make the resurgence in the population a one off boom?

n97 mini · 31-01-2012 12:43pm

antoobrien wrote: »

Grand, so anybody with PP from the 60's or so on should be exempt as it'll be part of their PP record.

You've inadvertently hit on something there. Prior to October 1st 1964 (when the 1963 Planning & Development act came into effect) there was no planning permission required to build whatever you wanted wherever you wanted.

So it's actually the polar opposite. Prior to that date there are no planning records at all!

Scofflaw · 31-01-2012 12:57pm

antoobrien wrote: »

Grand, so anybody with PP from the 60's or so on should be exempt as it'll be part of their PP record.

They'll still need to be inspected.

cordially,
Scofflaw

antoobrien · 31-01-2012 1:08pm

Scofflaw wrote: »

They'll still need to be inspected.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Charge for the inspection then, but not the registration. The registration fee is a pile of crap because any houses built after 1964 will already be recorded as having a septic tank or not.

So an alternative that might make more sense (especially given the begrudgery surrounding one offs) would be to update the planning register for all houses built before 1964 -and make the charge associated with this.

No wait, that can't happen - it'd mean that half the towns & villages would have to be re-registered.

Scofflaw · 31-01-2012 4:55pm

antoobrien wrote: »

Charge for the inspection then, but not the registration. The registration fee is a pile of crap because any houses built after 1964 will already be recorded as having a septic tank or not.

So an alternative that might make more sense (especially given the begrudgery surrounding one offs) would be to update the planning register for all houses built before 1964 -and make the charge associated with this.

No wait, that can't happen - it'd mean that half the towns & villages would have to be re-registered.

You'd get a partial and probably inaccurate register out of such a process.

cordially,
Scofflaw

antoobrien · 31-01-2012 4:56pm

Scofflaw wrote: »

You'd get a partial and probably inaccurate register out of such a process.

Much like the one we're going to get from the current proposals.

Scofflaw · 31-01-2012 4:57pm

antoobrien wrote: »

Much like the one we're going to get from the current proposals.

Why would this one be partial and inaccurate?

cordially,
Scofflaw

n97 mini · 31-01-2012 5:12pm

I think there is the supposition that houses built before Oct 1964 will get away with not declaring their tanks.

Maybe the TV licence inspectors remit will be widened to check for septic tank licences aswell when going door-to-door.

antoobrien · 31-01-2012 6:10pm

Scofflaw wrote: »

Why would this one be partial and inaccurate?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Same reason as any self registration scheme would be inaccurate. I don't see any difference between the suggestion I made and the official policy.

In fact, since there are large numbers of current/former council houses in the large towns like Dublin, Cork, Galway Limerick etc which were built before PP came in this should also be a priority.

There's an "upgrade" of a road in Galway going on for abut 18 months (and way the hell over budget), going through an area that afaik was largely built in the 50s and sometime last year they hit utilities that weren't on the plans. Oops.

Scofflaw · 31-01-2012 6:17pm

antoobrien wrote: »

Same reason as any self registration scheme would be inaccurate. I don't see any difference between the suggestion I made and the official policy.

In fact, since there are large numbers of current/former council houses in the large towns like Dublin, Cork, Galway Limerick etc which were built before PP came in this should also be a priority.

There's an "upgrade" of a road in Galway going on for abut 18 months (and way the hell over budget), going through an area that afaik was largely built in the 50s and sometime last year they hit utilities that weren't on the plans. Oops.

The difference is probably the €5k fine for non-registration. I imagine that the existing planning registers will be used as well, but looking through the planning registers for the existence of septic tanks and collating the information to a common standard would be a reasonably costly and time-consuming exercise in itself. Half a million or so septic tanks is no small number.

cordially,
Scofflaw

antoobrien · 31-01-2012 6:31pm

Scofflaw wrote: »

The difference is probably the €5k fine for non-registration. I imagine that the existing planning registers will be used as well, but looking through the planning registers for the existence of septic tanks and collating the information to a common standard would be a reasonably costly and time-consuming exercise in itself. Half a million or so septic tanks is no small number.

cordially,
Scofflaw

So in summary you don't mind the fact that pre 1964 urban based houses aren't covered by planning registers, despite what could be extremely dodgy sewage systems, but you do mind that there could be rural houses with dodgy sewage systems.

Make sense I suppose, until you have go unclog the feed into the sewage system in a 1990s estate because of a poorly designed junction point - something I have to do every couple of months to prevent sewage from backing up the whole way into my bathroom. But hey, that's not a possible pollutant because it happens under the aegis of Dublin City council.

Scofflaw · 31-01-2012 6:35pm

antoobrien wrote: »

So in summary you don't mind the fact that pre 1964 urban based houses aren't covered by planning registers, despite what could be extremely dodgy sewage systems, but you do mind that there could be rural houses with dodgy sewage systems.

Make sense I suppose, until you have go unclog the feed into the sewage system in a 1990s estate because of a poorly designed junction point - something I have to do every couple of months to prevent sewage from backing up the whole way into my bathroom. But hey, that's not a possible pollutant because it happens under the aegis of Dublin City council.

That represents nothing I've said, and bears no resemblance to my position. I don't see much point in responding to it beyond pointing that out. The more so, perhaps, because I currently pay about €1200-1400 in rates to DCC.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Cedrus · 31-01-2012 6:37pm

They could use the electoral rolls as a basis for the register and just delete everyone known to be on an urban foul main!:D

No, Wait, the electoral rolls have been updated using the eircom phone books for years, so there's all sorts of transients and foreigners registered who aren't even in the country anymore.

Tomk1 · 01-02-2012 1:59pm

Face facts, just draw a circle around an urban area, everyone outside that circle has a septic tank. Get someone a public-servant (contradictionary name) to go through the records, no need to register.

The truth is ; it's a tax to raise funds nothing more, might as well make people register everyear.

Basically back in the day, there was a tax for the size of your windows which became known as 'daylight-robbery'

In trying to think of a similar name, the best I can think of is, 'The Crapper-Tax' and for fairness to all, it should also apply to urban areas by even introducing 'crap-metering' it would only cost a few million to put the meters into place, as you couldn't expect a one-person house to pay the same as a 5-person household. The terminology could be called the 'crap by weight index'

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Denis_Diderot

bearach · 01-02-2012 6:00pm

chieftan65 wrote: »

Just a reminder to all my fellow country dwellers to register your septic thanks for inspection. I personally will register mine when Phil Hogan agrees to come and inspect it personally. I will let him get down in the tank so he can fully appreciate what the majority of people in this country find themselves up to the neck in to ensure that Phil and his fellow elite can receive a tap on the back and be called good little europeans. It didn't work with the OAP's phil and you wont bully the rural dwellers either

PLEASE HELP ME.. I have just an ordinary holding tank, no chambers nothing.. but my waste water that cums out of it is pumped to the local treatment plant. solids stay in the tank. is this ok?????????????????????????????///

Tora Bora · 01-02-2012 6:13pm

Tomk1 wrote: »

Face facts, just draw a circle around an urban area, everyone outside that circle has a septic tank. Get someone a public-servant (contradictionary name) to go through the records, no need to register.

The truth is ; it's a tax to raise funds nothing more, might as well make people register everyear.

Basically back in the day, there was a tax for the size of your windows which became known as 'daylight-robbery'

In trying to think of a similar name, the best I can think of is, 'The Crapper-Tax' and for fairness to all, it should also apply to urban areas by even introducing 'crap-metering' it would only cost a few million to put the meters into place, as you couldn't expect a one-person house to pay the same as a 5-person household. The terminology could be called the 'crap by weight index'

Denis_Diderot

Fantastic. I have just patented a "Crapometer":D I'm gonna make a sh1t load of money:D

[MOD]And that's enough of that, thanks, guys...[/MOD]

Scofflaw · 01-02-2012 6:50pm

bearach wrote: »

PLEASE HELP ME.. I have just an ordinary holding tank, no chambers nothing.. but my waste water that cums out of it is pumped to the local treatment plant. solids stay in the tank. is this ok?????????????????????????????///

That would have to be registered - the legislation defines a ‘domestic waste water treatment system’ as:

‘domestic waste water treatment system’ means a system involving physical, chemical, biological or thermal processes, or a combination of such pro- 10 cesses, utilised for the treatment or disposal of domestic waste water, or the sludge derived from domestic waste water, and includes—
(a) all septic tanks and waste water tanks and systems receiving, storing, treating 15 or disposing of domestic waste water and all drains associated with such tanks or systems, and
(b) all drains associated with the discharge of domestic waste water, whether or 20 not they discharge to a septic tank or waste water tank;

which would seem to cover your system. And the registration applies to all such systems:

70B.—(1) Each water services authority shall establish and maintain a register of domestic waste water treatment systems situated within its func- 35 tional area (in this Part referred to as a ‘register of domestic waste water treatment systems’).
(2) The owner of a premises connected to a domestic waste water treatment system shall, on or before the prescribed date and in accordance 40 with this section, apply to the water services authority in whose functional area the treatment system is situated, to have the treatment system entered in the register of domestic waste water treatment systems maintained by the water 45 services authority concerned.

That is, the register is a register of all ‘domestic waste water treatment systems’, not just septic tanks.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Going Forward · 06-02-2012 10:32pm

The requirement for registration for owners of small septic tanks is no longer compulsory and is under review by the UK Govt:

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/118753.aspx

I thought Dr. Phil had claimed that the requirement was as a result of an EU water directive.

It may be worth keeping an eye on our closer European partners on this one.

Icepick · 06-02-2012 11:15pm

Going Forward wrote: »

The requirement for registration for owners of small septic tanks is no longer compulsory and is under review by the UK Govt:

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/118753.aspx

I thought Dr. Phil had claimed that the requirement was as a result of an EU water directive.

It may be worth keeping an eye on our closer European partners on this one.

Why should we keep the right to pollute our neighbours?

Western_sean · 07-02-2012 8:45am

Has anyone mentioned the issue of towns which have water treatment facilities which are now to insufficient to cater for the vastly increased volume of housing?

It seems like a more significant problem and also one which could be expected to generate better returns for similar administrative effort.

bothyhead · 07-02-2012 10:52am

We are on a group tank, with 9 houses feeding into it. Who is responsible for registering it - A spokes person for the 9 houses? (no one would be that foolish), the 9 as a whole?, the farmer's land where it resides? (it's in a field behind the houses).

Scofflaw · 07-02-2012 11:07am

bothyhead wrote: »

We are on a group tank, with 9 houses feeding into it. Who is responsible for registering it - A spokes person for the 9 houses? (no one would be that foolish), the 9 as a whole?, the farmer's land where it resides? (it's in a field behind the houses).

I imagine the answer to that will have to wait on full details of the scheme - in brief, though, I'd say it's up to the group to decide who does it.

Also, I see the registration fee has been reduced for the first three months:

The Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has announced a reduced inspection fee for septic tanks.

Mr Hogan said the fee will be reduced from €50 to €5 for the first three months when the charge is introduced in April.

He said the lower rate was an incentive for septic tank owners to register early.

The deadline for registration will be March of next year.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0206/septictank.html

cordially,
Scofflaw

Septic tank charges

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