Almost one million homes in Ohio are beyond the reach of public sewage treatment.

If you live in one of those homes, are considering buying such a home, or will be building in area without access to public sewage treatment, register for the Soils & Your Home Sewage Treatment System workshop sponsored by the Delaware General Health District and the Delaware Soil and Water Conservation District.

This free workshop will be held Thursday, June 8, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Brown Township Hall, 3832 Main St., Kilbourne.

Staff from DGHD and DSWCD will cover the following topics:

• Soil properties, soil limitations, and mitigation.

• Soil Survey of Delaware County and Web Soil Survey.

• How to maintain a healthy home treatment system.

• Warning signs of a failing system.

• Corrective actions.

Home sewage treatment systems in Delaware County are typically leach field type systems, mound systems, or drip irrigation systems. Onsite soil is used to treat and disperse wastewater and is a critical factor in designing and maintaining any system.

Soil needs to be unsaturated to promote aerobic conditions, must be deep enough to remove all of the pollutants, and must be permeable to air and water in order to purify wastewater. Improper treatment of sewage can result in gastrointestinal illness and infections as well as pollution of wells, rivers, lakes and streams.

Poorly designed and poorly maintained systems can also result in financial losses in the investment of the home sewage treatment system and your property. Proper siting of your system combined with dedicated maintenance are much easier on your bank account than expensive repairs or even worse, replacement.

Learn all you can about soils, site review, plan review, permitting, construction, operation and maintenance of home sewage treatment systems by attending the June 8th workshop.

Reservations are requested so that we may prepare a sufficient number of handouts for participants. Call 740-368-1921 or email [email protected] by June 6, 2017. In the meantime, if you do not know what type of system you have and/or where it is located, you may wish to contact the Delaware General Health District which has records of systems that date back to the 1950s.

Stay tuned to www.delawareswcd.org to check out additional summer workshops including our Pond Clinic for Homeowners and our Urban Stormwater Management Clinic, both of which will be held in July.