Stop Making the First Developer Pay for Everyone Else’s Sewer

By Henry McClure, MCRE, LLC

Topeka, Kansas
September 7, 2026

Topeka has a habit. If you are the first one to build, you pay for the pipe. Then the City takes the pipe, bills every house that taps it for the next fifty years, and the next three plats connect like they invented gravity.

That is not “protecting taxpayers.” That is making one private party capitalize a public system and then walking away from the revenue.

What is actually commonplace

On-site laterals and in-plat mains? Developer pays. That is normal. Almost every city in the country works that way.

Off-site sewer to reach the tract? The first developer usually advances the money. Growth cities then do one of three things: they pay the oversize, they recapture from later connectors, or they put public money to the edge of the site because they want the tax base.

Topeka often stops at the first sentence and skips the rest. The 2015 outside-city water and sewer rule is blunt: the total cost of extending sewer, including interceptors, “shall be borne by the developer without any participation by the City of Topeka.” No recapture. No oversize share. No tap-fee refund.

Washington State has a 20-year latecomer statute. Texas cities refund connection fees until the extension cost is recovered. Kansas rural water districts already run 20-year refund contracts. Whitfield County, Georgia put $900,000 of public money to the edge of a housing site. Bartlett, Tennessee spent more than $4 million to unlock an industrial corridor.

Kansas already has the same idea under other names: RHID, TIF, CID, and sewer benefit districts. We just refuse to use them for the person who actually laid the pipe.

Topeka’s own code is less harsh than staff practice

Read the book, not the hallway conversation.

• In-plat laterals: developer pays. TMC 18.45.070(a). Fine.
• A main that serves more than one plat: Council may form a benefit district and special-assess the land that benefits. TMC 18.45.070(b). That tool exists. It is almost never used in the first developer’s favor.
• Connection fees: the City Manager can waive up to 25 percent for an economic-development project. Governing Body can waive more. TMC 13.20.680. Underused.
• Forced connection inside the city is not “the pipe is 200 feet away.” It triggers when the sewer is adjacent and the tank is a nuisance, the property sells, there is a building-permit remodel, or five years have passed after the sewer was built. TMC 13.20.100.
• Septic is still on the books. If public sewer is not available, Class A and C plats may use onsite systems with lot size set by perc test. TMC 18.40.020 and 18.40.030. Building permits require certified sewage disposal — public or approved onsite. TMC 14.10.050.

In unincorporated Shawnee County you can put in a septic tank that meets KDHE Bulletin 4-2. Cross the three-mile line or the city limit and you are told the only answer is a six-figure relocation. That is policy, not physics. K.S.A. 12-749 lets the city apply subdivision rules in the extra-territorial area. It does not require the city to ban the same wastewater system the county permits a half-mile away.

“I move the line. I recover the cost.”

I am not asking Topeka to hand me the entire sewer utility’s monthly bills. Those rates cover the plant and the existing system.

I am asking for every dollar created by the pipe I paid for.

A real recapture ordinance looks like this:

1. I design and build the off-site main — or relocate it — to City standards, post the bond, and dedicate it.
2. The City records a Recapture Area on every parcel that can tap that main or sit upstream of a lift station I funded.
3. Nobody later connects without paying a latecomer fee: their fair share of documented cost plus simple interest. City collects it at permit. City remits it to the original developer.
4. The City refunds its own system connection fee on every tap on that extension until principal plus interest is retired, or 20 years, whichever comes first.
5. If the City made me oversize or relocate for system reasons, it pays the incremental cost at acceptance. Not “subject to available CIP funds.”
6. If the main serves more than one owner, use the benefit district already sitting in TMC 18.45.070 so the neighbors stop free-riding.

Want the clean legal version of “I get the sewer income until I’m whole”? Put a surcharge only on the new customers on that extension and pledge it until the certified cost is retired. That does not raid the existing rate base.

Pair it with RHID. State law already lets property-tax increment reimburse sanitary sewer for up to 25 years. That is not a gift. That is the Legislature telling cities how to pay for growth without bankrupting the first mover.

Septic when the pipe is too far

Other Kansas cities use a distance test — 200 to 500 feet — and allow a private system beyond that, with a recorded duty to connect later.

Topeka should publish a cost cap. If the public main is not adjacent and the engineer’s cost to extend or relocate exceeds, say, $8,000 to $12,000 per lot, indexed, then a KDHE-standard onsite system is an approved alternative inside the city and the three-mile area. Lot size follows the perc table already in TMC 18.40.030. The plat carries a covenant to connect later under TMC 13.20.100.

In the extra-territorial area, require dry easements and stub-outs so a future main can go in without tearing up the street. Do not impose a sewer-or-nothing rule the county does not impose.

A failing tank is already a connect-now event. Nobody is asking to legalize cesspools. We are asking the City to stop using “someday sewer” as a veto on otherwise buildable land.

Five votes

1. Adopt a 20-year sewer recapture / latecomer ordinance. City collects. City remits. Admin fee capped at 5 percent.
2. Strike “without any participation by the City” from the 2015 extension rule. Developer advances standard-size cost. City pays documented oversize and City-required relocation.
3. Use the benefit district already in the code for off-site mains that serve more than one owner.
4. Adopt the cost-feasibility septic alternative above.
5. Hand every applicant a one-page “who pays” matrix at sketch plan. Ambiguity is a tax.

The line at the dais

The City will own the pipe. The City will bill every house on it for fifty years. The first developer should not donate that pipe and then watch the next three plats tap it for a fee the City keeps.

Recapture is not a giveaway. Benefit districts are already in the code. Septic on a perc-tested acre is already in the code. RHID is already state law.

What is missing is the will to use the tools instead of defaulting to “developer pays all, City keeps all.”

Topeka does not have to become Austin. It has to become a Midwestern city that wants the next subdivision badly enough to stop making the first mover finance the public system for free.

That is the whole argument.

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Henry McClure
MCRE, LLC
3625 SW 29th Street #100, Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994

Citations for staff who will ask: TMC 13.20.100, 13.20.220, 13.20.680, 14.10.050, 18.40.020–030, 18.45.070; Topeka Ord. Water-Sewer Outside City Limits (2015); K.S.A. 12-715b, 12-749; KDHE Bulletin 4-2; Wash. Rev. Code ch. 35.91; Kansas RHID Act, K.S.A. 12-5241 et seq. 

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