Sourced from the Williamsburg County Water and Sewer Authority via SC Rural Water Association, the Waccamaw Region Section 208 Water Quality Management Plan (adopted October 10, 2011), the Kingstree Zoning Ordinance (amended through Ordinance 2024-03), and R.61-56 — last checked August 2026.
Who Issues Williamsburg County Septic Permits
This surprises people moving to South Carolina from almost anywhere else: Williamsburg 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.
Where the application goes: ATTN: OSWW, SCDES, 2600 Bull Street, Columbia, SC 29201
Statewide phone: 1-855-731-2504
Online: epermitting.des.sc.gov · Form: D-1740, rev. 07/2026
The Fee Is $150 in Every County
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,” amended effective May 27, 2022. There is a $150 re-application fee if the instructions are not followed.
You may instead hire a Professional Soil Classifier privately, capped at “no more than three (3) times SCDES’s fee” — so up to $450. People use it to skip the queue, and the queue is real: a 700-permit backlog in April 2023, and coastal counties running six to fourteen weeks behind.
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Sixty-Seven Sewer Connections
Be careful what you conclude from that. It is a utility customer ratio, not a household septic percentage — Kingstree’s municipal system serves properties the county authority does not count. Do not let anyone turn this into “98 percent of Williamsburg County is on septic.” And the source carries no date.
What it does establish is the practical reality of permitting here. Recall that R.61-56 § 300 bars a new septic permit — and a repair — where a treatment facility is “accessible for connection.” In a county with 67 sewer connections, that provision is very rarely the thing standing between you and a permit. Your constraint is soil, not sewer.
Which puts unusual weight on the soil evaluation. If the ground will not take a system, there is no fallback here. That is the argument for spending on a good soil classifier rather than the cheapest available, and for asking about the reserve area before you buy rather than after.
A Document Worth Chasing If You Are in a Struggling Community
There is a regional plan that may name your community specifically, and we want to point you at it even though we could not extract the relevant table.
The Waccamaw Region Section 208 Water Quality Management Plan, adopted October 10, 2011, contains Chapter 5, “Future Septic System Management Needs” (page 65), and Table 5-2, “SC DHEC Priority List of Environmentally Distressed Communities for Sewer Needs” (page 68).
The plan does note at page 17 that “The Marysville community in particular has several residences that have experienced malfunctioning septic systems over the last few years.” The text we retrieved does not say which of the three counties Marysville is in, so we are not attributing it to Williamsburg. If you are in a community by that name, it is worth asking about.
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).
- 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. Williamsburg is low, flat Coastal Plain crossed by the Black River, and wet-season groundwater is the number that decides a lot here.
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 meeting every setback. On a tight lot the reserve area is what fails, not the drainfield. With effectively no sewer to connect to, a failing system in Williamsburg County has to be repaired or replaced on your own land. The reserve area is not a formality — it is your only option.
Setbacks and Sizing
- 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
- 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 access Williamsburg County’s ordinances — the county website blocked automated retrieval on every path attempted. Any county minimum lot size is unverified. Separately, the Kingstree Zoning Ordinance (amended through Ordinance 2024-03, posted August 2024) contains no septic, sewer or minimum-lot-without-sewer provision in the text we retrieved; its § 153.501 is flood protection and § 153.224(C)(16) requires site plans to show special flood hazard areas.
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. Every mandatory-connection distance in South Carolina is local.
The Williamsburg County Water & Sewer Authority is at PO Box 1124, Kingstree, SC 29556 — (843) 355-8997. Kingstree operates municipal sewer, though we could not establish its extent. The 2,800 / 67 figures come from an undated listing, so their vintage is unknown — confirm with the authority before quoting them. Regional water quality planning runs through the Waccamaw Regional Council of Governments, covering Georgetown, Horry and Williamsburg counties, on (843) 546-8502.
What We Could Not Confirm
Williamsburg County ordinances entirely — the county website blocked every path attempted. Minimum lot size, connection distance and any overlay are all unverified.
The vintage of the 2,800 / 67 figures, and the extent of Kingstree’s municipal sewer system.
Table 5-2 of the Waccamaw 208 Plan and which county Marysville is in — both covered above. Also: no SCDES field office address or hours for Williamsburg County, and no count or percentage of homes on septic at any vintage.
Where Williamsburg County Sits
Kingstree anchors a rural, low-lying county on the Black River between Florence and the coast. It has among the least public wastewater infrastructure of any county in this guide, which makes the soil evaluation — rather than any ordinance — the thing that decides whether land here can be built on.
Nearby counties we cover: Clarendon County · Horry County · Florence County. All of them run through the same state permit and the same $150 fee — what differs is the local ordinance layer, compared on our South Carolina septic permits by county page.
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