Every time Isaias Martinez flushes the toilet or washes his hands, he risks losing his home.
The septic tank behind the newly constructed house he bought for $627,000 two years ago started leaking almost as soon as his family moved in.
Rains in the low-lying neighborhood in Dorchester County just outside Summerville amplified the problem, sending waves of fetid water across neighbors' yards and into a stream that feeds the Ashley River.
For much of last summer, the neighborhood smelled like the inside of a port-a-potty, residents said.
The same state agency that signed off on the permits for the septic tank took the Martinez family to court in August, where a judge ordered them to fix the problem within three months or vacate the house.
"That is absolutely criminal," said state Rep. Joe Bustos, a Mount Pleasant Republican who sponsored a bill aimed at banning new septic permits in counties near the coast. The family should have never faced the threat of a state-mandated eviction, he said.
Martinez spent nearly $40,000 trying to repair the septic system, all while the most obvious solution sat within eyesight but out of reach.
Martinez and his next-door neighbor are the only two homes in the area that don't use public sewer lines. Both have called Dorchester County and asked to connect. Both received the same firm answer: no.
"No one can say I haven't tried, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have spent so much money on this, knowing that this is not my fault," the Spanish-speaking Martinez told The Post and Courier. "I moved to a new house to not have problems, to try to give my children a better life and make them feel more comfortable. And look at the problem I'm facing now."
The episode reveals how South Carolina's septic tank rules, among the weakest in the Southeast, can create plumes of pollution for months or years that aren't confined to a single property. And regardless of what caused the tank to fail or if the land was never suitable for a septic tank, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control leaves the cleanup to homeowners and localities.
The problem isn't confined to Dorchester County. Failing septic tanks are spilling bacteria into James Island Creek and Shem Creek in the Charleston area. A new 150-home development in Berkeley County has experienced so many failures that people in the community are suing the developer.
Environmental groups suing the state tried unsuccessfully to force DHEC to stop allowing new septic tanks in the coastal region while their case taking aim at South Carolina's lax regulations moves through court.
Meanwhile, the state is signing off on new septic tanks at a record pace, approving nearly 11,000 in the coastal region in the last three years.
Solving Martinez's problem may be a half-measure in this neighborhood off Orangeburg Road: The house next to his still has a septic tank that DHEC considers operational. But the agency's rules don't consider a growing body of science showing the hallmarks of climate change, rising waters and more intense rainfall can sabotage septic tanks and cause fecal bacteria to flow through yards and into open waters.
And neighbors said the stench arrived before the Martinez family moved in.
"This is one of the end results of the state's weak septic tank regulations. It's a public health nightmare, and it's an environmental nightmare," said Andrew Wunderley, the Charleston Waterkeeper who is among those suing the state over its septic tank policies. "This is a real, acute sort of case in point of what everybody's concerned about and what we're trying to prevent."
Years of inaction
Dorchester County ignored complaints about the water for nearly four years, according to email correspondence with Nate and Natalie Tarpein, who live directly behind and downhill of the two houses that started going up in 2019.
The backyard used to be Natalie's oasis, where she would spend time among her garden and animals. It's home to their emus, chickens and ducks. But most of the time now, it's a putrid swamp. The water floods their garage and is causing the foundation to settle. Cracks are forming between the bricks. Moisture from under the house is rotting the chimney. When some of their animals dropped dead, they couldn't help but wonder what part the pollution played.
Repair quotes to fix the foundation, heating and air system, and dehumidify the house carry a price tag of over $80,000. Homeowners insurance denied the Tarpeins' claim because it doesn't cover ground water damage.
And the repairs would be pointless until the water is under control.
They said rains began flooding their yard soon after builders pulled out pine trees to clear the land and build. The smell of the water changed soon after the first home was occupied.
The county's stance has been that the stormwater is an issue for the residents to figure out themselves. But soon after the Tarpeins built a berm to help keep the water from further damaging their home, they got an email from the county.
The berm violates county ordinance because it diverts stormwater into other people's yards, the county stormwater official said. What about the runoff carrying fecal bacteria through their yard, they asked? That's a matter for DHEC, replied Kacy Byrd from the county stormwater office.
"I have been to the point like I'd rather just move out and not have to deal with it … but I don't think we could sell it," Natalie Tarpein said. "I don't understand because it's like, these are pretty small backyards to have septic systems, to have a leach field for the septic and then to drain straight down on to us, it just all seems so wrong."
In March, the Tarpeins hired a lab to test the E. coli levels in the water that feeds into their yard from each of the homes with septic tanks. Any score higher than 100 on the test is considered high risk for human health.
Near Martinez's fence, the reading was 3,800. At the other fence, where DHEC still considers the septic tank functional, the reading was 77,000. It's impossible to tell from the test how much of the bacteria is from a septic tank and how much is from the dogs that live in the backyard.
Both tanks are engineered mound systems that use a pile of raised dirt in the yard to help filter the sewage, an indicator that the ground conditions were too poor for a normal septic tank.
South Carolina only requires 6 inches of dry soil between the septic tank and groundwater — half as much as coastal scientists say is the minimum necessary. And the state’s policies give no consideration to changes caused by rising waters and sinking land.
William Williford, who lives in the other home using a septic tank, has a long-standing feud with the Tarpeins over the water and other issues. He said he is confident it's the Martinez tank polluting the neighborhood and feels like the complaints about his tank are a form of harassment.
But Williford acknowledged it makes little sense that the county and state allowed septic tanks on lots where all the neighbors have sewer lines.
And the county's stormwater department has offered little help with the runoff. A ditch out to the road would probably do the trick, he said.
"They said it's a private road, and I get the runaround all the time," Williford said. "I pay a pretty penny for taxes, but they do nothing for us."
Nate Tarpein said county stormwater officials visited his house in the days after The Post and Courier began asking questions and said they would try to help.
Nothing has worked
Before he paid $627,000 for the four-bedroom, four-bathroom house on Columns Road in November 2021, Martinez was raising a family in a mobile home park in Ladson.
Now the owner of three restaurants and a food truck, Martinez got his start selling shrimp cocteles at a flea market.
The house was supposed to be his slice of the American Dream. A place where his children would have the chance to grow older feeling comfortable in their own space, where they could play games outside and run around in the backyard.
But two weeks after they moved in, an alarm out back lit up red — the first sign that the septic tank wasn't working. Martinez said the homebuilder sent workers to check it out, but the leaking continued. It would be months before DHEC officials showed up after someone complained. The agency then ordered him to fix it.
They would eventually fine Martinez $5,000 and take him to court. A judge in August gave the family three months to find a solution or face the risk of losing the house.
Martinez, who wasn't familiar with septic tanks before he bought the house, has spent nearly $40,000 trying to make it work. Some septic repairmen have told him there's no way to fix it because the land was never suited for a septic tank.
“De nada ha servido,” Martinez said. Nothing has worked.
Martinez now has the tank pumped out every three weeks to comply with the judge's order, and his family no longer does laundry at home.
The homebuilder, Ed McClellan, said he installed septic tanks at the two houses because the county told him it would cost more than $65,000 to connect them to public sewer. He said the stormwater problem was out of his control because nobody has figured out how to keep water from flowing downhill.
McClellan blamed the Martinez family for the septic problem, saying it's a result of their children riding four-wheelers in the back — a detail disputed by the Tarpeins.
McClellan also said the septic tank couldn't handle the number of people living in the house or the baby wipes they flushed down the toilets.
"That ain't the problem, I can promise you," said Michael Knight, owner of Knight's Septic Tank, which built and sold the tanks to the installers. Knight said the soil on Columns Road and the high water table make the area unsuitable for septic tanks. "It’s never worked right from Day 1."
Knight said he has been fielding calls about the situation for years, calling it the biggest problem he's encountered in decades of work.
The company that installed the tanks said some of the dirt above the tank had been moved when they visited the home to investigate the failure.
The engineer who designed the septic system did not return calls from The Post and Courier.
Martinez came to dread the rain, which carried the filthy water out of his yard and created problems for his neighbors.
With no way to repair the septic tank and the county refusing to allow him to connect to sewer, he and his wife are at a loss.
Three men from DHEC visited the neighborhood on April 23, including David Vaughan, who oversees the office that handles septic tanks permits. None of the men spoke Spanish.
Martinez said no one from the agency has ever tried to speak to him in Spanish.
Vaughan refused to answer a reporter's questions on April 23. In the following days, decisionmakers with DHEC and the county refused multiple interview requests and agreed only to answer written questions through spokeswomen. The state agency said it couldn't say much about the situation because of its lawsuit against Martinez.
DHEC said it has 43 Spanish-speaking employees and access to interpreter services. The agency said it determined it didn't need language assistance that day.
On April 25, a DHEC spokeswoman said the agency had confirmed that connecting to sewer wasn't an option for the Martinez family.
The next day, soon after The Post and Courier began asking questions about the case, a county spokeswoman said officials decided Martinez could connect to sewer if he agrees to buy and maintain a grinder pump that would send his household waste to the nearby manhole.
She said the county had reached out to Martinez to share their decision but didn't explain why the county refused for so long.
Later that same day, Martinez told reporters he hadn't heard from the county. When The Post and Courier told him about the county's reversal, Martinez sighed with relief.
“We had really lost any hope we had left of staying in that house,” he said. “This is a very big relief for me. Not only for me, but most importantly for my kids and also for our neighbors, who have also been affected by this problem. Now we’re going to be able to be more at peace.
"This is the good news of the day that I will be able to tell my kids."
Martinez will have to pay $9,000 to connect to the sewer, and thousands more to install the pump.
Up and down the East Coast, cities and towns are spending billions of dollars to protect waterways endangered by inundated septic tanks.
A pair of Charleston lawmakers want to essentially ban new septic tanks in the coastal region, where rising seas and sinking land present a recipe for failure that threatens waterways along the coast.
A bill sponsored by Bustos and state Rep. Tom Hartnett Jr., R-Mount Pleasant, in this year’s General Assembly session would prohibit new septic tank permits within two miles of the coast or any other waterway, essentially banning them in the coastal region. The bill sits untouched in the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, at risk of never being considered before the end of this year's session May 9.
"This is a ticking time bomb. … With septic tanks, it’s not a matter of if it’s gonna be a problem, it’s a matter of when it’s gonna be a problem," Bustos said. "We need to drag South Carolina kicking and screaming into the 21st century."
