Sourced from the City of Dillon Code of Ordinances (current through Ordinance 25-05, passed June 9, 2025), R.61-56, and SCDES permitting documentation — last checked August 2026.
Who Issues Dillon County Septic Permits
This is the part that surprises people moving to South Carolina from almost anywhere else: Dillon County does not issue septic permits, and neither does any other South Carolina county. Onsite wastewater permitting is a state function.
The agency is the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services (SCDES), created on July 1, 2024 when Act 60 of 2023 split the old DHEC into SCDES for environmental programs and SC DPH for public health. Septic sits in SCDES’s Bureau of Regional and Laboratory Services.
Where the application goes: ATTN: OSWW, SCDES, 2600 Bull Street, Columbia, SC 29201
Statewide phone: 1-855-731-2504 (Onsite Wastewater Customer Service Center)
Online: epermitting.des.sc.gov
Form: D-1740, revision 07/2026
The Fee Is the Same in Every County: $150
Because permitting is centralized, there is one fee statewide. R.61-56 § 102.2: the Department “shall charge a fee of one hundred and fifty dollars ($150.00) to evaluate the site of a proposed onsite wastewater system.” That section was amended effective May 27, 2022. Payment is by check or money order to SCDES, and there is a $150 re-application fee if the application instructions are not followed.
There is a second route worth knowing about. You may hire a Professional Soil Classifier to do the evaluation privately, and the rules cap what they may charge at “no more than three (3) times SCDES’s fee” — so up to $450 (form DES 25-0011, dated 07/2025). People use it to skip the queue, and the queue is real: SCDES reported a 700-permit backlog in April 2023, and coastal counties have run six to fourteen weeks behind.
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Inside the City of Dillon, a Septic Tank Is Illegal
Most South Carolina municipalities discourage septic where sewer exists. Dillon goes further, and the language leaves no room:
Read subsection (B) carefully. It is not conditioned on sewer being available, or accessible, or within any distance. Inside the corporate limits of Dillon, installing a septic tank is simply prohibited.
And a 150-foot connection trigger with a 90-day clock
§ 4-2-4 requires that “every person owning or occupying real property within the corporate limits of the city used as a place of business or residence, located within a distance of one hundred and fifty (150) feet of an accessible public sewer shall connect the property with the public sewer.” Connection must happen within 90 days of sewer becoming available, and each day of non-compliance after the deadline is a separate offense.
That 150-foot figure is worth appreciating in context: the State of South Carolina sets no distance at all. R.61-56 bars a permit where sewer is “accessible” and then declines to define accessible in feet. Dillon supplies a number where the state does not, and it is a short one.
What this means if you are buying
The practical consequence is about the city line, and it is easy to miss. A septic-served house just outside the limits is lawful and stays lawful. The same house, if annexed, sits under an ordinance that prohibits installing a septic tank and compels connection within 150 feet of a line. If you are looking at property near the Dillon city boundary, find out which side of it you are on, and ask whether annexation is contemplated.
Note also the interaction with the state rule that runs the other way: under R.61-56 § 300, if connecting would require annexation, then sewer is not considered accessible for state purposes and your septic permit stands. The city ordinance and the state rule are answering different questions, and you can be subject to both.
The Rule That Costs the Most Money: Six Inches
South Carolina requires a minimum vertical separation of six inches between the deepest point of effluent application and the zone of saturation — the level groundwater reaches — for systems under 1,500 gallons per day (R.61-56 § 200.3).
Six inches is remarkably little, and the comparison is the fastest way to understand it:
- South Carolina — 6 inches
- North Carolina — 18 inches on the coast, 12 inches inland
- Georgia — 24 inches
- Alabama — 24 inches
South Carolina permits systems on ground its neighbors would refuse. That is legal, and it is also why Dillon County sits in the Little Pee Dee basin and floods, so the depth to groundwater on your lot in a wet season is the number that matters, not the one measured in a dry month.
The Repair Area Nobody Tells You About
Under R.61-56 § 200.7, a new system must reserve “a usable repair or replacement area equivalent to at least fifty (50) percent of the size of the original system” — 100 percent for community systems.
Read that as a land requirement, because that is what it is. Your lot has to hold the tank, the drainfield, and half a drainfield again in reserve, while still meeting every setback. On a tight lot that reserve area is what fails, not the drainfield itself. In unincorporated Dillon County there is generally no sewer to fall back on, so the reserve area is not a formality — it is the only place a replacement system can go.
Setbacks and Sizing in Dillon County
These come from R.61-56 and apply identically statewide:
- 75 feet from a private well · 100 feet from a public well
- 75 feet from the mean high water line of a stream, canal or retention pond, and from a delineated critical area line (tidal waters and tidelands)
- 25 feet from a drainage ditch · 25 feet upslope of a basement
- 5 feet from a property line · 5 feet from a building
- Rock or a restrictive horizon must sit more than 12 inches below the deepest point of effluent application
There is no state minimum lot size for a septic lot. R.61-56 requires only that the lot be large enough to hold the system, the reserve area and the setbacks. We could not retrieve the unincorporated Dillon County ordinances, so whether the county imposes a minimum lot size for septic lots is unverified. Ask county planning before you assume there is none.
When Sewer Blocks a Septic Permit
R.61-56 § 300 is blunt: “Permits for new onsite wastewater systems shall not be issued where a wastewater treatment facility is accessible for connection,” and the same bar applies to repairing or replacing a failing system.
But the state sets no distance. “Accessible” is defined only negatively — “where annexation or easements to cross adjacent property are required to connect… the wastewater treatment facility shall not be considered accessible.” So if connecting would require you to be annexed, or to cross a neighbor’s land, sewer is not accessible and your septic permit stands.
The City of Dillon operates a municipal sewer system, and its ordinance is where the 150-foot rule lives. Beyond the city, sewer coverage in Dillon County is undocumented in anything we could reach — we could not identify a countywide utility or a service area map. That is a real gap, and it matters because the state’s accessibility test turns on whether sewer is actually available at your address.
What We Could Not Confirm
The Wellhead Protection Program. The City of Dillon has one — Title 4, Chapter 7, sections 4-7-1 through 4-7-11, including delineation, a pollution source inventory and protection measures. Whether it restricts or prohibits septic systems, and what radius it covers, we could not read. If your property is near a municipal well, this is the provision to ask about.
Adoption dates for the two sections quoted above. The code shows no ordinance history for §§ 4-2-3 and 4-2-4. The only date anchor we have is that the code is current through Ordinance 25-05, passed June 9, 2025, so both were in force on that date.
Unincorporated Dillon County ordinances entirely, and sewer availability outside the city. Neither was reachable. Everything on this page about the septic prohibition and the 150-foot rule applies inside the city limits; we cannot tell you what the county adds beyond the state rule, and we are not going to assume it adds nothing.
Where Dillon County Sits
Dillon sits on I-95 at the North Carolina line, in the Little Pee Dee basin. The county has a small municipal sewer system at its center and, as far as the public record shows, very little beyond it — which makes the city boundary unusually consequential. On one side, septic is the norm. On the other, it is unlawful.
Nearby counties we cover: Marion County · Horry County. All of them run through the same state permit and the same $150 fee — what differs is the local ordinance layer, which is compared on our South Carolina septic permits by county page.
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