Garfield County officials are trying to figure out how best to deal with an issue that, quite frankly, stinks.

The issue is the disposal of what is known in waste management circles as “septage,” or the human waste that is collected from septic systems large and small, as well as from porta-potties and other temporary accommodations.

Garfield County's landfill facility is no longer accepting septage, the South Canyon landfill owned by Glenwood Springs is only sporadically accepting the material, and a planned composting operation near Rifle, which reportedly would alleviate most of the problem, is awaiting state permits to open up.

As a consequence, local septic system service companies, known as “pumpers,” are caught in the middle, and all that waste is, in effect, backing up.

“There's no place in the valley that will accept septic waste,” said Jeff Warren, owner of the Roto-Rooter service in Glenwood Springs. He said there is no place that will accept large volumes of septic waste on a consistent basis.

Warren said facilities in Mesa and Eagle counties are not accepting septic wastes from other counties, which is making matters that much worse.

“Every pumper is having a problem,” said Linda Maynard, co-owner of the B&R Septic Service in Carbondale. “It's just backlogging everything.”

Two new facilities are in the works however, that may solve the problem, one at the city of Glenwood Springs' South Canyon landfill, and the other at a completely new composting operation near Rifle (see related story).

South Canyon near capacity

At South Canyon, Maynard said, the city's landfill historically has been a dumping facility for septage from Garfield County and from Pitkin and Eagle counties and the tiny hamlet of Marble, which is in Gunnison County but located at the upper end of the Crystal River valley south of Carbondale.

In recent months, Maynard continued, South Canyon has been reducing the amount of septage it will accept.

This has gone on to the point where, during the period of May 23 to May 25, there was no septage dumping permitted at South Canyon at all, she said.

But the manager of the South Canyon facility, Larry Giroux, as well as Glenwood Springs City Manager Jeff Hecksel, told the Post Independent that septic waste is being accepted at the landfill on a limited basis, and Giroux predicted he will soon be able to accept much more.

“We take septage waste at South Canyon,” Hecksel confirmed, but he said it “depends on when people are coming and how much they are dumping.”

“Is it the city of Glenwood Springs' obligation to take all of that from all of Garfield County?” he asked, not to mention other counties. “I don't think it is. We're not set up to deal with that volume of water.” He said the city government has no plans to to change its operations.

Garfield County Landfill rebuilding ponds

Garfield County normally operates three treatment ponds at the county landfill near Rifle, where trucks could regularly deliver material gathered from residential and commercial septic systems.

But two of those treatment ponds were recently shut down at the state's request, due to concerns that the ponds were leaking into the soils surrounding the county landfill site.

The one pond still in operation has filled up and can no longer accommodate further deliveries of septage, according to Garfield County public works director Betsy Suerth.

That means septic tank service companies must truck tons of the stuff to landfill locations as far away as Delta County or Denver, according to Warren and Maynard.

“It's a predicament, and the state hasn't helped us,” said Suerth, explaining that the county is awaiting new state rules about the operations of its septage treatment systems.

In the meantime, she said, the two closed ponds are being rebuilt in anticipation of the new state rules, and the county hopes to begin accepting the material again soon.

More costly service leads to some illegal pumping

Trucking septage loads to distant facilities is a hassle and expensive, said Maynard. She said it can involve trip costs of up to $150 per hour that must be passed on to the customer.

“That's more than some of them will pay to have their septic pumped,” she noted.

“That makes it very expensive to pump out a septic tank,” said Warren. “When some people get problems, they just pump it out themselves, onto a field or something.”

And that poses environmental hazards down the road, if untreated septic wastes find their way into streams, well fields and, ultimately, perhaps even the groundwater.

“We don't want human waste on the surface of the ground,” said Jim Rada, Garfield County's environmental health manager, adding that such practices are illegal except under tightly controlled circumstances that are rarely permitted by state and county regulations.

He said unincorporated areas of Garfield County have some 5,000 septic systems in operation, as well as 20 or more drilling rigs with associated septic tanks and innumerable portable toilets in a variety of locations, all being regularly pumped out.

Rada estimated that Pitkin County has as many as 3,000 septic systems, the waste from which comes to Garfield County facilities.

If enough of those were pumped out secretly, and the contents dumped on nearby fields, he said, it could cause serious illness to people and animals.

jcolson@postindependent.com