Out in the township, you're on a well and septic — and the county checks it when you sell

If you’re buying a home in one of Shiawassee County’s townships — outside the cities of Owosso, Corunna, Durand, Laingsburg, and Perry and the older village centers — there’s a good chance it runs on a private well for water and its own septic system for waste, not city utilities. That’s normal out here, but it comes with a few things a town dweller might not think about.

A septic system is your responsibility, and replacing a failed one is expensive — a new drain field can run into many thousands of dollars, far more than a routine tank pump-out. So it pays to understand the system before you buy.

Here’s where Shiawassee is different from most of Michigan. Michigan is the only state in the country with no statewide septic code, so the rules are set locally — and most counties leave a septic inspection entirely up to the buyer. Shiawassee is one of the counties that doesn’t. Under the county’s health rules, a property’s septic system has to be inspected and evaluated before the property is sold or transferred, unless it was already certified within the past year. So here the inspection isn’t optional — it’s part of selling the home, and a system that’s found to be failing has to be dealt with. The county health department runs the program and keeps a list of certified inspectors.

A few things worth nailing down either way: where the tank and drain field are, when the tank was last pumped, and whether the well water has been tested recently for bacteria and nitrates. To get started or ask questions, the Shiawassee County Health Department’s Environmental Health Division (shiawasseechd.net; 989-743-2390) in Corunna is the place to go.