Snohomish County’s Savvy Septic Program is celebrating the successful completion of its first year of a three- year pilot program. The new Savvy Septic Program invests in clean water by assisting homeowners with the costs of on-site septic system (OSS) preventative maintenance, repair, and replacement, and through septic care education.

Since launching in April of last year, 192 homeowners received Savvy Septic rebates for OSS system inspection and maintenance to help ensure that their systems are functioning properly. Twelve homeowners received low-interest loans for major system repairs, and sixteen homeowners received a grant through Savvy Septic’s low-income grant program to repair or replace failing systems. In all, the Savvy Septic Program provided $234,223 in financial assistance to 220 homeowners, helping to protect water quality, public health, and residential property in Snohomish County in the first year of operation.

The Savvy Septic Program also hosted two free septic care workshops for homeowners to learn best practices for healthy system maintenance. County staff received excellent feedback from the more than sixty workshop attendees about the quality of the information received. Workshop attendee Lee Campbell said that “Every homeowner with a septic system should attend this workshop”, and also commented on the potential financial savings that he gained, “For the short amount of time I spent at the workshop, I can see myself saving quite a bit of money over the life of my septic system.”