After dozens of tries, Houston gets septic tanks raised

MAT-SU — The city of Houston says its essentially won its first major code compliance case since getting serious about enforcing its codes.

Houston Mayor Roger Purcell said the case involved a pair of storage tanks the septic draining company Royal Flush put in the ground off of Armstrong Road. Purcell said the city began handing out citations early this summer once it became clear the tanks were in the ground. The area, he said, is zoned residential and the lot is near wetlands, both of which put the company on the wrong side of Houston’s municipal codes.

But a couple weeks back he got confirmation the tanks were no longer in the ground which, essentially, satisfies the city’s complaint.

Three calls to numbers listed to Royal Flush went unanswered, before a message could be left. A call to Royal Flush owner Terry Shurtleff’s home phone was not answered.

Asked how big the tanks were, Purcell said they were huge.

“They’re like 10-15 feet wide and 40 feet long,” Purcell said. “They’re the size of what you have on the back of a truck tanker. And there were two of them in the ground.”

Court records show the first citation in a list of more than 50 citations was written in June. Purcell said writing a lot of tickets was part of the city’s plan.

“Every day you have them in there we’re going to fine you $300,” he said. “Well, several thousand dollars later they decided to pull them out of the ground.”

He said the agreement reached with Royal Flush was that if they pulled the tanks out of the ground, the city would dismiss the citations.

Purcell said that about 10 days ago he got confirmation that the thanks had been pulled and photos to prove it. As far as he’s concerned, the case is finished. Well, finished once Royal Flush moves the tanks off the property and once the city has a chance to meet with its attorney and sort out the process for dismissing the tickets.

“They’re out of the ground, they’re not being used for sewer and septic,” Purcell said.

The city’s community service officer, Dennis Lords, declined to speak in depth about the case.

“The case is still ongoing so I prefer not to speak a lot about it,” Lords said.

But he did say that going to court was helpful for the city.

“We found out things which was good for us at the court hearing that were things we did not know, that we needed to know,” Lords said.

For one, Purcell said, they found out there were two tanks, not just one.

Purcell said that dismissing the tickets was a satisfactory resolution since the case, as far as he’s concerned, was never about the money. It was about enforcing the rules.

“Putting a commercial septic in a residential area, in a wetlands, is unacceptable for anybody,” Purcell said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.