Stories of unprofessional conduct on a level that curled toes motivated Kim Seipp to combat ignorance, wives’ tales, and an outdated state septic code.

As co-owner of High Plains Sanitation Service in Strasburg, Colo., Seipp and her husband, Jeff, are leading by example. They attended the first onsite inspector certification training conducted by the National Association of Wastewater Transporters Inc., and Kim Seipp became a NAWT-certified onsite inspector trainer.

The couple’s drive to learn everything they could about the industry brought them to the Colorado Professionals in Onsite Wastewater, where Seipp — now the operations and maintenance representative and member of the education committee — is designing a certification program to advance professionalism statewide.

Seipp is excited about the progress CPOW has made since 2002. Their goal is to have enough certified NAWT and Consortium of Institutes for Decentralized Wastewater Treatment trainers to bring all of the courses these organizations offer to Colorado.

SCRATCHING THE PUMPER ITCH

In 1992, Kim and Jeff Seipp bought out his father’s share of the family septic business, Columbia Sanitary Service in Golden, Colo., then sold it six years later to manage a horse and alfalfa ranch in Last Chance, Colo. “Jeff grew Columbia’s revenue from $120,000 to more than $260,000 during those years,” Seipp says. “He pumped 1.5 million gallons of septage a year by himself, refusing to hire help or take a break. The schedule was killing him.”

After getting out of the liquid waste industry, Seipp enjoyed making and selling hay while his wife trained the ranch owner’s miniature horses. But independence was in his blood. He’d been self-employed since he joined his father. The couple discussed what business they could run successfully, and the answer was a septic service. They looked for a new business territory with minimal competition and room for extended residential growth, finding it in Strasburg, 30 miles east of Denver, and purchased 36 acres of undeveloped land for a future home.

After ordering a 2001 Sterling vacuum truck with 2,600-gallon steel tank and Jurop PNR-82 pump, outfitted by Imperial Industries Inc., and a portable restroom truck and 10 Tufways from Satellite Industries, the couple opened High Plains Sanitation Service in 2000. They continued renting a house from the rancher, and Jeff drove 60 miles to Strasburg to work. Returning home, he land-applied the lime-stabilized septage on the rancher’s fields.

IMPROVING CUSTOMER EDUCATION

“We started the portable restroom business to create revenue until the vacuum truck arrived,” Kim Seipp says. “At the time, the Fort Morgan-Brush area was experiencing substantial growth,” Before long, High Plains had 54 Tufways and five Satellite Maxim 3000s in the field.

When the vacuum truck arrived, Jeff Seipp worked two days a week for the people who bought his former business. As he established his own customer base within a 60-mile radius of Strasburg, he set his mind at improving customer education and raising the standard for maintaining onsite systems.

“One sad thing about this industry is the people who come in thinking they’re going to make a fast buck,” Kim Seipp says. “They buy a truck and don’t have a clue how to do things properly. Jeff sets the record straight, but hearing contradictions confuses customers, gives them a negative opinion of the industry, and makes them distrustful.”

The couple joined CPOW, hoping for literature from nationally recognized organizations that confirmed what they told customers. No such documents existed. That’s when Seipp ran for and was elected to the CPOW board as its operations and maintenance representative.

HITTING THE BOOKS

Seipp spent many hours educating herself on statutes, understanding how they worked and how they differed from county to county. “CPOW is guided by 13 recommendations from a steering committee on how to improve the industry through training and certification,” she says. “One of the first things CPOW did when it was formed in 2002 was to organize an annual educational conference.”

Despite the advances, Seipp has talked to county regulators in the state who are still unaware that the organization exists. Others have heard of it, but have no idea what it does. Consequently, Seipp is contacting the state’s 64 counties to obtain their lists of licensed pumpers, installers and designers. CPOW will send news about itself and the annual conference to everyone on them.

In 2008, CPOW offered its first Certified Installers of Wastewater Treatment Systems national credential test developed by the National Environmental Health Association. The test was repeated at the CPOW conference in January.

Seipp’s headliner, however, is the NAWT onsite inspector course. “We have four county health departments with a title transfer or point-of-sale regulation that require homeowners to have their septic tanks inspected by a certified NAWT or National Sanitation Foundation inspector,” she says. “More people are familiar with NAWT than with NSF.”

NAWT certification was becoming so important that CPOW approved Seipp attending the 2009 NAWT onsite inspector trainer certification course. As a NAWT-certified trainer, she taught her first onsite inspector course at CPOW’s 2010 conference.

“These are still baby steps,” Seipp says. “Our goals are to establish training centers like the ones in Washington and Utah, have our programs count toward CEUs, and certify enough members as NAWT and Consortium trainers to bring all of their courses to Colorado.”

County health departments have asked Seipp to teach the NAWT certification training course. Consequently, Seipp and CPOW members are developing an on-the-road show. “We’re one step closer to getting everyone on the same page,” she says.

BUILDING THE BUSINESS

Before working in the family septage business, Seipp did accounting, budgeting, and financial analysis for a large corporation. She brought these skills into the home office. To find customers, the couple ran an advertisement in the paper listing what set them apart from their competitors, such as being certified NAWT and county onsite inspectors, and doing water flow tests on potable wells.

“Being family owned and operated has been another good selling point,” Seipp says. “We also accepted Visa, MasterCard and Discover from the beginning because customers wanted that option for emergencies.”

They placed ads in 10 area phone books and the expense has paid off. She also managed the company’s Web site. At first, judging its effectiveness was difficult. The only feedback was occasionally hearing a customer repeat something they saw at the site. Two years ago customers began e-mailing to set up appointments, confirming the power of the Web as a marketing tool.

In 2005, the couple built a home and shop on their land and moved from Last Chance. They leased a spot central to Seipp’s routes on the I-70 corridor and had a Denver-based waste hauling company park a tanker on it. Seipp fills the tanker with 6,000 gallons of septage every two days, which is then hauled to Denver for disposal.

Seipp pumped 600,000 gallons of septage last year. During busy summer months, he averages four pumps per day. The couple tries not to work on weekends or holidays, but they don’t charge extra if they do. “We’re in a service industry,” Seipp says. “If we treat people right and explain what they should do to avoid similar disasters, they often become repeat customers.”

As the pumping business increased, portable restroom rentals declined. The September 2008 recession stopped development in Fort Morgan. “Several local builders use us now and we service many special events in the spring and summer, especially graduations and wedding parties,” Seipp says. “We have 25 to 30 units out all the time, but they’re easier to service because they’re within a 30- to 40-mile radius.”

High Plains also inspects onsite systems for homeowner associations. They leave door hangers with a mini-inspection report on one side and maintenance dos and don’ts on the other. The hangers were a huge positive for customers. Previously, many never knew if or when their systems were inspected.

INDUSTRY REPUTATION

From Realtors to homeowners, the need to develop standards and eliminate conflicting information is driven by accounts of unprofessional conduct. For example, a frustrated Realtor in Colorado Springs has yet to hear two inspectors tell the same story about inspection criteria.

In another case, an inspector pumped the septic tank, but never turned on the dosing pump, which was clogged and the reason why sewage backed into the house. He told the homeowner that a large concrete box in the yard was part of the well, never popping the lid to see the leachfield zone valves. Another inspector failed an operational system because he didn’t understand its design.

“These aren’t isolated incidents, and they drive our quest for statewide education and certification,” Seipp says. “The effort goes hand-in-hand with attempts to update the statutes. The last revision was in the 1970s, and the code uses 1950s technology.”

Updating the statutes should move Colorado from a prescriptive code to a performance code, enabling mountain communities to build on small lots currently classified as unsuitable for development. Seipp knows of health officials who believe sewers are the only answer to wastewater.

“I’m looking at these rural counties with no major towns and wondering, how can they say that?” she says. “Going from county to county with our educational program should help the situation.”

Response to CPOW’s educational seminars continues to increase. This year, 55 of Colorado’s 63 onsite inspectors were due for recertification, swelling registration numbers. Slowly, the level of professionalism is rising, and will continue to do so as Seipp and her colleagues plan for the future one step at a time.