Well and septic due diligence in British Columbia

If you are buying a property on a well and a septic system, two things are true that most buyers are not told, and both change how you should approach the purchase.

No British Columbia law requires a septic inspection when a property is sold. And the health authority never inspected or approved the system in the first place.

Neither of those is a scandal. They follow from how the regulation is designed. But if you assume the opposite (that someone official signed off on this system, and that something in the sale process will catch a problem), you will do the wrong due diligence.

What the septic regulation actually does

Onsite sewerage in BC is governed by the Sewerage System Regulation, B.C. Reg. 326/2004, made under the Public Health Act. It applies to holding tanks, to systems serving a single-family residence or duplex, and to systems with a design flow under 22,700 litres a day (s. 2).

It is a filing and certification scheme, not a permitting and inspection scheme. The sequence is:

1. Before construction, an authorized person files a package with the health authority: owner details, structure type, soil type, depth and porosity, sealed plans and specifications, and written assurance that the design is consistent with standard practice (s. 8(2)).
2. Within 30 days of completing construction, the authorized person gives the owner the plans, a maintenance plan, and a copy of a letter of certification, and files the signed letter with the health authority with the as-built plan and maintenance plan attached (s. 9(1)).
3. In that letter, the authorized person, not a health officer, certifies that the system was built to standard practice, substantially in accordance with the filed plans, and that if it is operated and maintained per the maintenance plan it will not cause a health hazard (s. 9(1)(b)).
4. From then on, the owner must maintain the system in accordance with the maintenance plan and keep records of that maintenance (s. 10).

An “authorized person” is either a registered onsite wastewater practitioner (trained, and holding a registration certificate issued by ASTTBC under the Professional Governance Act, for Type 1 or Type 2 treatment methods) or a professional, meaning someone trained in soil analysis and sewerage system construction and maintenance who is a practising member of a recognised BC professional association (ss. 1, 7). Type 3 systems, and any system designed for a minimum daily flow over 9,100 litres, must be supervised by a professional rather than a practitioner alone (s. 6(3)).

Nowhere in that scheme does a health officer examine a design, visit a site, or approve anything. The health officer’s routine role is on the other side: characterising health hazards (s. 2.1) and issuing orders where one exists (s. 11, and Public Health Act ss. 30–31).

So the single most common statement about a rural property in this province, “the septic is approved”, is not describing anything the regulation produces.

What the records prove, and what they don’t

Island Health holds the filings and letters of certification, and you obtain them through its Request for Release of Information process, for a fee stated on its Sewerage and Subdivision page as $50 per property as at the date that page was read.

What a record proves: that a filing under s. 8 and/or a letter of certification under s. 9 was made for that property, on a given date, by a named authorized person, with whatever as-built plan and maintenance plan were attached.

What it does not prove: current condition. Current capacity. That the system was actually built the way it was certified. That it still works. That it has been maintained. That it is adequate for the number of people you intend to put in the house, or for the bedroom count you intend to add.

And note the date: the current filing regime commenced 31 May 2005. A system older than that may have no record at all, and the absence of a record is not evidence of anything except the absence of a record.

Island Health’s own advice to a buyer is to engage an authorized person to inspect the system and report on its status, and it identifies a performance inspection report as what would typically be used during a sale. That is the correct ask, and it is not the same thing as a records search. Do both.

If you are also running the system harder than the last owner did (more occupants, a suite, a laundry business, an irrigation change that alters where water goes), the relevant question is not whether the system passed, but whether it can carry your use. That is a question for the authorized person, not for a filing.

Who is liable when it fails

The owner. Not the person who built it, and not the person who sold it to you.

The Sewerage System Regulation puts the primary duty on the owner of the parcel: to ensure domestic sewage is discharged into a public sewer, a compliant holding tank or a compliant sewerage system, and that it does not cause a health hazard (s. 3(1)); to maintain the system per the maintenance plan (s. 10(1)); and to keep records (s. 10(2)).

Section 2.1(1) prescribes as health hazards the discharge of domestic sewage or effluent into a source of drinking water, into surface water, into tidal waters, onto land, or into a system a health officer considers incapable of containing or treating it.

And the Public Health Act order power reaches the current owner directly. A health officer may issue an order where a health hazard exists or a significant risk exists (s. 30), expressly even if the person is complying with every term of a permit or approval under any enactment (s. 30(2)), and the order may be made against “the owner or occupier of the place where the health hazard is located” (s. 31(2)(c)).

There are offences, including operating a sewerage system for which no letter of certification has been filed (s. 12(e)(ii)).

Whether you also have a claim against the seller is a matter of contract and case law and is outside what this page will assert. What is not in doubt is who the health officer’s order is addressed to.

Setbacks: two instruments, and the difference matters

This is the single most commonly botched point in the topic, so it is worth being precise.

What is in the regulation, and binding. Sewerage System Regulation s. 3.1 sets well setbacks only: a holding tank must not be built less than 15 metres from a well, and a sewerage system must not be built less than 30 metres from a well, where “well” means one supplying a domestic water system. A lesser distance is permitted only on prior written advice from a professional competent in hydrogeology, with a copy and notice of the intended distance given to a health officer, and no closer than the professional’s stated distance (s. 3.1(3)–(4)).

There is no watercourse setback in the regulation at all.

What is guidance. The familiar table of separation distances (30 m from a dispersal field to a permanent fresh water body, 15 m to an intermittent one, 15 m to a marine water body, 30 m to a surface drinking water source, and 60 m or 90 m to a high-pumping-rate well or a well in an unconfined aquifer) comes from Table II-19 of the Sewerage System Standard Practice Manual, Version 3 (September 2014). The regulation says an authorized person “may have regard to” that manual (ss. 8(3), 9(2)). It is the yardstick the legal test of “standard practice” is measured against; it is not itself the regulation.

The manual also notes expressly that local government bylaws and development permit areas may impose larger setbacks, and that wellhead protection plans or restrictive covenants may too.

One more thing that is often cited wrongly: the Groundwater Protection Regulation s. 18 setback of 15 metres is a well-to-well rule: a proposed water supply or permanent dewatering well must be at least 15 metres from an existing water supply well. It says nothing about septic systems.

Wells: construction, records and the identification plate

Well work is regulated under the Water Sustainability Act and the Groundwater Protection Regulation.

Constructing, decommissioning, deactivating or disinfecting a well must be done by a qualified well driller, or under the direct supervision of one or of a professional competent in hydrogeology or geotechnical engineering (WSA s. 49). There are narrow exemptions, including excavating a well no deeper than 15 metres, deactivating or disinfecting a well you own, and installing or replacing a flow meter, well cap, cover, valve or vent on your own well (s. 49(3)), but work must stop if an aquifer is unexpectedly penetrated (s. 49(4)). Pump and wellhead work is subject to the parallel well pump installer rule (s. 50). The Comptroller maintains public registers of registered drillers and pump installers (Regulation s. 7).

For water supply wells, the Regulation requires a well identification plate, a well construction report and a well decommission report, submitted both to the Comptroller and to the well owner (Schedule 6). Reports must be completed on the Comptroller’s form, submitted within 90 days, and retained for at least ten years (ss. 76, 78). The owner must protect the plate and report loss or damage within 30 days (s. 56(1)(c)). A well out of service for five years is to be decommissioned or deactivated (s. 69), and on decommissioning the plate must be removed and destroyed (WSA s. 55(5)).

Because the Comptroller must publish the reports it receives (WSA s. 57(4)), a filed well log for a water supply well should appear in GWELLS, the provincial groundwater wells and aquifers application. That is where you look up a well tag number, a driller’s log, depth, yield at time of drilling and construction details.

Absence of a GWELLS record is not evidence there is no well, or that the well is unlawful. Reporting duties bind the person responsible for drilling, the mandatory submission scheme dates from 2016 and its predecessor, and many older domestic wells were never registered. Registration of a domestic well is voluntary.

Do you need a water licence?

For household use, no. The Water Sustainability Act s. 6(4) permits a person to divert and beneficially use groundwater from an aquifer for a domestic purpose without a licence, in accordance with the regulations. The Province states that domestic well owners are exempt from licensing and from provincial water fees and rentals, are deemed to have rights to the water they use for domestic purposes, and are encouraged but not required to register their well, registration creating a record so the use is considered when other licence applications are decided.

But “domestic purpose” is a defined and bounded term (WSA s. 2). It means household use by the occupants of one or more private dwellings (other than multi-family apartment buildings) on a single parcel, expressly including drinking water, food preparation and sanitation, fire prevention, water for animals or poultry kept for household use or as pets, and irrigation of a garden not exceeding 1,000 m² adjoining and occupied with the dwelling.

The trigger is purpose, not volume. Irrigating a two-acre orchard, watering a commercial herd, or any commercial or industrial use requires a licence regardless of how little water is involved. A rural property can be simultaneously exempt for the house and unlicensed, and therefore not lawfully authorised, for the field.

The transition deadline has passed and was not extended. Existing non-domestic groundwater users had until 1 March 2022 to apply under the Water Sustainability Regulation s. 55(1). The Province states plainly that as of 2 March 2022 the existing-use groundwater application is no longer available, that non-applicants must apply for and obtain a licence before the water can be lawfully used, stored or diverted, and that they are now treated as new applicants, paying the application fee, and receiving a junior priority date based on the application date rather than their historical date of first use. Annual rentals for existing non-domestic users accrue from 29 February 2016 regardless.

If a listing mentions irrigation, a hobby farm, a nursery, a vineyard, boarded horses, or anything else beyond household use, “is there a water licence, and what is its priority date” is a question with a real answer and real consequences.

One caveat to keep: the domestic exemption is subject to regulation-making powers (WSA ss. 135(6), 136) under which authorisation can be required for domestic groundwater use in a specified aquifer. Whether any such regulation applies to a particular aquifer on southern Vancouver Island is not something this page asserts either way.

Water quality: what applies, and what to test anyway

The Drinking Water Protection Act generally does not apply to a private single-family well. The Act’s duties attach to a “water supplier” of a “water supply system”, and “water supply system” expressly excludes a domestic water system that serves only one single-family residence (s. 1). The obligations to provide potable water (s. 6), to hold construction and operating permits (ss. 7, 8) and to monitor (s. 11) therefore do not reach it.

A shared well is a different matter. A well serving two or more residences is not within that exclusion, and so it is a water supply system, engaging operating permit and monitoring duties. On rural parcels and in bare land stratas, shared-well arrangements are common and this is the trap, not the single well.

The standards themselves are worth knowing as a benchmark even where they do not legally bind you. Schedule A of the Drinking Water Protection Regulation requires no detectable E. coli per 100 mL; and for total coliforms, where one sample is taken in a 30-day period, no detectable total coliforms per 100 mL, or, where more than one sample is taken, at least 90% of samples with none detectable and no sample over 10 total coliforms per 100 mL.

Island Health states that private well owners are responsible for their own potable water and can submit samples to independent laboratories accredited by the Office of the Provincial Health Officer for total coliform and E. coli testing. It publishes the same acceptable results and the interpretation codes you will see on a lab report, which is useful when a seller produces one.

Two practical points on testing:

• A single bacteriological sample is a snapshot. Surface water intrusion is often seasonal. A clean result in August says less about a shallow well than a clean result in February.
• Bacteria are not the whole test. Chemical parameters (arsenic, nitrate, sodium, chloride, manganese, iron, hardness, and on this coast salt water intrusion in coastal wells) are worth including, and treatment cost is a real number you can get a quote for before you commit.

Quantity is the gap. There is no statutory yield test triggered by a sale, and no prescribed minimum flow rate for a private domestic well anywhere in the primary sources. A flow or pumping test is a matter for contract, not law. If you want to know what the well produces in late September after a dry summer, the only way is to test it, and the time to do that is before subject removal.

What to actually do

Written as subject conditions, because that is where this belongs:

On the septic:

• A performance inspection by an authorized person, with a written report, not a visual look at a lid.
• The Island Health records search for the s. 8 filing and s. 9 letter of certification, and the as-built plan and maintenance plan if they exist.
• The maintenance records the owner is required to keep (s. 10(2)). Their absence tells you something.
• Confirmation that the system as built matches what you intend to use it for.

On the well:

• The GWELLS record and the well tag number, with the driller’s log if one was filed.
• Water quality testing through an accredited laboratory: bacteriological, and a chemical panel appropriate to the area.
• A flow or pumping test if the use matters to you.
• The licence question if anything beyond household use is contemplated, including its priority date.

On both:

• The setbacks between the dispersal field, the well, and any watercourse, measured, not assumed.
• Whether either system is shared with another property, and on what registered basis.

The Capital Regional District runs a homeowner education programme on septic systems and suggests tank pump-out usually every three to five years. That is guidance rather than a bylaw, but it is a reasonable anchor for what ongoing ownership of one of these systems involves, which is the other thing worth internalising. On municipal services, this is somebody else’s problem. Out here it is an asset you own, with a service life and a replacement cost, and it is the one asset on the property that nobody photographs.

Related

• Buying acreage near Victoria
• Bare land strata: shared water and sewage systems

Where this applies: acreage for sale near Victoria BC, Highlands real estate and Metchosin real estate.