On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:18:51 -0000, Peter Crosland wrote:

"This will hopefully serve as a warning to the owners of properties
served
by cesspools to check that their cesspools do not have any discharge
pipes,
holes or cracks which could discharge untreated sewage to the
environment."

So where does that leave householders who have ancient septic tanks that
were installed under a laxer (or indeed non existent) regime?

If its there already,as with most stuff covered by BDO etc its OK to leave
it.

The MOMENT you upgrade it in any way, new regulations tend to apply.

I.e. leave it alone and they cannot touch you. Make a change and it must
be
upgraded to modern specs.

Sorry to say but you are quite wrong. The EA can, and do, prosecute people
who hve a system that is causing pollution. Whilst the chances are that they
will not find out if they do the consequencesx are likely to be costly. This
can happen by chance or by someone reporting it.

Yes, if it is extremely bad, and the perptrator does nothing, and they find
out about it.


In my case, the amount of pollution my old septic tank produced was about
0.001% of the pollution caused by all the deer, foxes, dogs and so on who
crap all over the countryside and indeed my back garden round here.

Nevertheless they made me put in a Klargerster for a 'new build' - which I
was happty to do frankly, because although the occasional whiff from the
old system is nothing like as bad as what cones off the Cambridge sewage
works on a warm summer day, I didn't want it anyway.

Cess pits - as opposed to septic tanks - are a different matter. They
really are a health hazard and te EA is right to go after them.

Most old septic tanks are rather poor, but they are a thousand times better
than a cess pit.



Peter Crosland