Michigan Septic Code Bill, NY Grants, FL Permit Changes

Sen. Sam Singh (D-East Lansing) reintroduced the legislation in January 2026. A similar effort died in the 2023–2024 session. This time, the bill lays out a phased approach: a technical advisory committee would work with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) to write a statewide code over three years. Inspections could begin within 45 days of the rules taking effect. The first systems targeted would be those most likely to be contaminating drinking water. Any system older than 20 years within 500 feet of a lake, river, or stream. Or one that was never properly permitted. Goes to the front of the line. Systems 30 years or older would also be flagged. Local health departments would have a decade to work through those high-risk evaluations. After that, re-inspections every 10 years. Here is the part that matters for your wallet: the bill caps the inspection fee at $50. That is the inspection itself. If the inspector finds a failing drain field or a cracked tank, the repair or replacement costs fall on you. Singh was blunt about that at a March 7 webinar: "Your residents are going to find out, 'Hey, I've got a failing system. And guess what? Now I've got a $15,000 bill, $10,000 bill.' Some even higher." The scale of the problem is hard to overstate. More than 9,000 miles of Michigan streams currently fail safe-contact standards. Meaning they are not safe for swimming. Additional monitoring could push that number to 37,000 miles. That is more than half of all streams in the state. Michigan's 45 local health departments each set their own septic rules today, with no statewide standard and only a handful performing evaluations of existing systems. Stream data: Michigan Environmental Council / Michigan Advance reporting on legislative testimony. The bill would also create an electronic database tracking the location and condition of every inspected system. That database would not be open to the public under the current draft, though access is still being debated. Supporters have been pushing for a statewide code for nearly 40 years. Whether this attempt succeeds depends on overcoming the same opposition: local health departments worried about staffing and funding, and homeowners worried about what an inspection might find.

Governor Hochul signed the enabling legislation (S8241-A/A8807) in July 2025. The law restructured the reimbursement rates to push homeowners toward advanced systems: 75 percent of eligible costs up to $25,000 for enhanced systems, versus 50 percent up to $10,000 for conventional. Counties can set graduated rates within those caps, meaning some may offer even stronger incentives for the higher-performing technology. The program is run by the New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC), working with the Departments of Health and Environmental Conservation. It targets areas where failing septic systems threaten drinking water or priority water bodies. Long Island is the primary focus. Roughly 360,000 homes there still rely on cesspools or aging systems, according to Suffolk County government estimates, sitting above the region's sole-source aquifer. This is Round 5 since the program launched in 2017. Eligible waterbodies will be posted on EFC's website once counties have been notified of their allocations. Not every county participates, and not every property within a participating county qualifies.

The bottleneck hits hardest in fast-growing suburban counties and rural areas where municipal sewer does not reach. The Department of Environmental Protection handles septic permitting, and its review timeline can stretch for weeks. Some local governments refuse to issue a building permit until that DEP approval is in hand. Every week of delay costs money. Carrying costs on the land, construction crews on hold, mortgage timelines slipping. HB 589 and its Senate companion SB 698 would break that logjam. A homeowner or builder would show proof of a submitted DEP application, and the local government would be required to issue the building or plumbing permit without waiting for the septic approval to come back. The bill also builds in a 90-day buffer on new rules: if DEP adopts new septic installation standards, permit applications filed within 90 days of adoption would be grandfathered under the old rules. That provision takes effect July 1, 2026. On a separate track, SB 1510 targets the Indian River Lagoon Protection Program. Current law requires owners of residential properties over 10 acres in the IRL area to connect to central sewer or upgrade to a nitrogen-reducing system by 2030. The bill would remove that requirement for large-lot owners. A rollback of the Clean Waterways Act restrictions that environmental groups have opposed.

The proposed amendments would have required a Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) permit for any repair or replacement of a septic tank, pump tank, or drain field on oceanfront lots. Right now, septic tanks are lumped in with houses under the rules, which means fixing a beachfront system does not trigger a separate coastal permit review. Dare County Manager Bobby Outten described the absurdity to the commission: "They've got a house sitting in the water, their septic tank's on the wet sand beach, and their drain field is back in the dry sand beach and we have to permit it." The county has no authority to deny a permit that meets the existing rules, even when the system is clearly in the ocean's path. The state Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Environmental Quality's Division of Coastal Management, and the North Carolina Coastal Federation met on February 18 and agreed to slow down. A broader stakeholder meeting was planned for mid-March. About one million septic systems have been installed in North Carolina since 1990. Every county in the state uses them, with reliance ranging from 14 percent to 93 percent.

EGLE partnered with Michigan Saves, a nonprofit green bank, to design and manage the program. The income thresholds were updated for 2026. A single-person household qualifies with gross annual income under $47,880, scaling up to $167,160 for a household of eight. Tier 1 (income-qualified) loans are processed through TRUE Community Credit Union. Tier 2 (market-rate) loans are available through multiple lenders across the state, with rates varying by creditworthiness but starting at 6.24 percent and terms up to 15 years. Both tiers cover the full scope of a replacement project: evaluation, pumping, design, permitting, and installation. Connections to municipal sewer also qualify if the existing system has been documented as failing. The program requires homeowners to work with a Michigan Saves authorized contractor and obtain a construction permit from their local health department. That permit requirement is the first step. It forces an official determination that your system is failing or near-failing. EGLE estimates at least 20 percent of Michigan's 1.3 million systems are in some level of failure. That is 260,000 systems. This loan program cannot fix all of them, but it removes the biggest barrier: the upfront cost.