TORONTO -- Ontario's minister of Municipal Affairs, Bill Mauro, announced Monday that the government will shelve a proposal to increase the requirements for septic system maintenance.
Under a previous minister, the province began a process that would have changed the Ontario Building Code to require residential septic tanks to be inspected and drained every five years or when they are one-third full, whichever comes first. Other changes included requiring the keeping of septic tank and treatment units' maintenance records.
The building code already require septic systems to be cleaned out at one-third of working capacity, and that stipulation remains in place.
Mauro — the Liberal MPP for Thunder Bay-Atikokan — says when he took on the portfolio a year ago and saw the proposal, he immediately "flagged it as an area of concern," feeling it was unwarranted.
"There's been nothing that's come to the table in the year-plus that I've been the minister that would suggest that there are a lot of failures, or that there are serious negative consequences environmentally from people's management of their septic systems," Mauro said, reached in Toronto.
He said a recent public consultation process also showed him that many people were unaware of the existing mandatory call for pump-outs at the one-third level.
"A lot of people I've talked to since we've gone out and discussed this issue were not aware of it. But the point is simply that the five-year mandatory automatic pumpout plus keeping maintenance records was just not necessary...It seemed like a good idea, I am sure, to some at the time ... But it's just not something that I'm comfortable with," Mauro said.
The municipal councils in six rural Thunder Bay townships had passed resolutions opposing the proposal, and asked for an exemption for rural homeowners should the changes go ahead.
"We all know when it's time to have our septic tanks pumped out, and we pump it out," Oliver-Paipoonge Mayor Lucy Kloosterhuis declared last month.
"Nobody tells us when we have to clean out our chimneys for our wood stoves or pump out our septic tanks. They're just getting a bit too much in our face."
The proposal would have put the responsibility on municipalities to ensure tanks were pumped out in five-year intervals.
"Small municipalities don't have the capacity to look after these kinds of things," Conmee CAO Patricia Maxwell noted recently.
On Monday Mauro sent a letter to heads of council announcing his decision not to proceed, saying the ministry welcomed the feedback and that he was pleased with "the frank responses."
