By Henry McClure, MCRE, LLC
September 7, 2026
The hallway story is that you cannot put a septic tank in the city, and that inside the three-mile line the City can make you run sewer no matter what it costs.
That is not what the book says.
Topeka’s own code still has a septic path. Staff treat it like a museum piece. Developers treat it like it was repealed. It was not.
This is the stretch map.
1. The city did not ban septic. It wrote a recipe for it.
Class A is every plat inside the city limits. TMC 18.40.010(a).
Class A still has four utility combinations. Two of them are septic or no-public-sewer:
- City water, no public sewer: preliminary plat on half-acre lots, Health Department perc tests each lot, lots laid out so they can be replatted later. TMC 18.40.020(b)(2).
- No City water and no public sewer, private well plus septic: preliminary plat on one-acre lots, perc tests, lots at least 150 feet in any direction, and a plat restriction that laterals stay 25 feet off the property line and off the well. TMC 18.40.020(b)(4).
If septic were illegal in the city, that language would not be there.
Where to push: “Serviced with a public sewer” means the sewer is actually there and can take the flow. It does not mean “a main exists two miles away if you write a six-figure check.” Make staff put in writing whether the tract is serviced or merely could be reached. Those are different sentences.
2. The three-mile line is not a sewer-or-nothing zone.
Topeka’s subdivision rules apply inside the city and within three miles. TMC 18.30.020. That is K.S.A. 12-749. It is plat control. It is not a utility franchise.
How the three-mile ground is classified:
- Class B — touches the city, touches a pending annexation, touches a plat that touches the city, or sits on a major thoroughfare inside three miles. TMC 18.40.010(b).
- Class C — everything else inside three miles that does not touch the city and is not on a major thoroughfare. TMC 18.40.010(c).
Class B and C both allow no-public-sewer plats. Lot size follows perc tests. Floor is one acre and 125 feet of frontage when there is no public water and no public sewer. TMC 18.40.020(c)(2) and (c)(4).
The only extra bite on Class B: if the plat touches the city or a pending annexation, the owner files a written consent to annexation with the preliminary plat. TMC 18.40.020(c)(5).
Class C does not require that consent. TMC 18.40.020(d). That is the quiet line in the code. Isolated three-mile ground is the easiest septic case Topeka wrote for itself.
Where to stretch: Do not let a Class C tract get treated like it already lives in the city. It does not. County sanitary rules and KDHE Bulletin 4-2 still govern the tank. The City is regulating the plat, not owning the wastewater.
3. The official on-ramp is TMC 18.35.080. Use it first.
Before the preliminary plat is even filed:
- Call Public Works about sewer availability.
- If public sewage systems are not available, the owner or the engineer contacts the Health Department for individual septic or a community-type treatment plant.
- If it is individual septic, request perc tests. Health Department results go to Planning Commission.
- That work is done before the preliminary plat is filed.
That is the code path. Not a variance. Not a favor.
Where to push: Get the “not available” finding on paper before sketch-plan turns into a $400,000 interceptor quote. Once Public Works has said sewer is available, you are arguing uphill. The statute wants the Health Department in the room when sewer is not available. Put them in the room.
4. Perc table — TMC 18.40.030. This is the lot-size fight.
| Perc rate | Minimum site |
|---|---|
| 1 inch per hour | ½ acre |
| ½ inch per hour | 1 acre |
| ¼ inch per hour | 1½ acres |
| Slower than ¼ inch | 3 acres |
Setbacks on every site:
- Tank and lateral to water supply: 50 feet
- Tank and lateral to watercourse: 25 feet
- Tank and lateral to dwelling or property line: 10 feet (Class A no-water/no-sewer plats tighten laterals to 25 feet off the line)
Health Department picks test locations, approves tank and field design, and inspects before occupancy. TMC 18.40.030(d).
Where to stretch: Eastern Shawnee clay will often land you on 1 to 3 acres. That is not a denial. That is the table. If staff say “septic doesn’t work here,” ask for the perc number, not a speech. A community plant — which the code lists next to septic — is the move when lots need to be smaller than the perc table.
5. Building permits do not say “public sewer only.”
TMC 14.10.050: no building permit until the City Engineer certifies that facilities are available for sanitary sewage disposal, or there are approved plans and assurance the public improvements will be finished.
“Facilities” is the word. An inspected septic system the Health Department already signed is a facility. So is a community plant.
Where to push: Do not accept “we can’t issue a permit without a sewer main” if 18.40 and 18.35 already sent you to the Health Department. Ask the Engineer to certify the onsite facility, or to put in writing which sentence of 14.10.050 he is using to refuse it.
6. Forced connection is narrower than people think.
Inside the city, TMC 13.20.100 does not say “connect if a pipe exists anywhere in the neighborhood.”
Connect when the main or lateral is adjacent to the property and one of these is true:
- The tank is a public nuisance (Utilities Director decides), or
- The property changes ownership, or
- A building permit remodel of the main structure, or
- Five years after that adjacent sewer was built.
Leak a tank onto the ground and you have a separate violation. TMC 13.20.110. That is fair. A working tank on a lot the sewer does not touch is not a connect-now event.
Where to stretch: “Adjacent” is the fight word. Adjacent means on the property or in the abutting street, not “we can extend it if you pay.” Carry 13.20.100 into the plat meeting. If they cannot call the main adjacent, they cannot call 13.20.100.
Outside the city, City sewer generally wants annexation first. TMC 13.20.220. That cuts both ways. If they will not annex you, they should not pretend you are already on the municipal system.
7. You can avoid the plat fight altogether on some ground.
Platting is not required for:
- Agricultural splits of 3 acres or more with no new street. TMC 18.30.020(b)(1).
- Outside the urban growth area: 3 acres, 300 feet of frontage, width/depth no worse than 1:2, existing public road. TMC 18.30.020(b)(2).
- Inside the UGA: 20 acres, same frontage and ratio, existing public road. TMC 18.30.020(b)(3).
- Old legal lots of record.
Those tracts live under county/KDHE onsite rules, not a Topeka sewer main. That is the cleanest septic play in the three-mile area if the land can stay large.
8. Three options the code already names. Use all three.
- Individual septic — perc, Health Department, lot size from the table.
- Community-type sewage treatment plant — written into 18.40.020 and 18.35.080. Packaged plant, HOA or rural sewer district, built to KDHE. This is how you keep density when individual fields will not fit.
- Holding tank — defined in TMC 13.20.610 as a nondischarging tank with no lateral. City will take domestic contents at the plant for a fee. Ugly economics. Useful as a temporary or a special-use argument, not a subdivision plan.
Dry sewer stubs and easements on a septic plat are the olive branch. You get to build now. They get a route for a future main without tearing up the street. That is the deal a grown-up city would take.
9. Script for the counter
“TMC 18.35.080 says if public sewer is not available I go to the Health Department before preliminary plat. I am asking you to say, in writing, whether this tract is serviced by public sewer today. If it is not, I am filing on the half-acre or one-acre septic track in 18.40.020, with perc under 18.40.030. 13.20.100 only forces a tap when the main is adjacent. I will stub easements for a future main. I am not asking you to invent a rule. I am asking you to use the one you already adopted.”
If they say the Comp Plan or the Urban Growth Area overrides the septic sections, make them show the ordinance that repealed 18.40.020(b)(2) and (b)(4). A plan is not a repeal.
Bottom line
County ground can take a tank. City code still lets a tank inside the limits when the sewer is not there. Three-mile Class C is the widest opening. Class B costs you a consent to annex if you touch the city. Class A inside the city is legal on half-acre or one-acre lots if the Health Department will perc it.
The City can still make the process miserable. That is not the same thing as the City having repealed the sections.
Stop asking permission to read the book. Quote it.
—
Henry McClure
MCRE, LLC
3625 SW 29th Street #100, Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
Cite this at the counter: TMC 18.30.020, 18.35.080, 18.40.010, 18.40.020, 18.40.030, 14.10.050, 13.20.100, 13.20.110, 13.20.220, 13.20.610; K.S.A. 12-749; KDHE Bulletin 4-2.
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