Septic service in Greenwood and south Sebastian County

Greenwood runs its own water and sewer utility, so most houses in town flush to a city main and never need a pump truck. The septic calls come from everything around it: acreage along the county roads toward Hackett, Bonanza and Huntington, and houses on big lots that were built past the last sewer line. This page is about what is different for septic owners at the south end of Sebastian County. For the city itself and the rest of the River Valley, start with septic tank service in Fort Smith.

On Greenwood sewer, or on your own?

The city's Wastewater Department runs a treatment plant that handles about 907,000 gallons a day, fed by more than 34 miles of sewer pipe and 12 lift stations. City limits are not the dividing line, though. Greenwood's 2024 sewer rate notice lists separate inside-city and outside-city sewer rates (an example 4,000-gallon month works out to $48.40 inside and $60.60 outside once the second phase took effect), so some homes past the city line are connected too. Your bill settles it: a Greenwood sewer charge means a main carries your wastewater away, and no sewer line on the bill means there is a tank in the yard. Not sure whether a main runs near a lot you're looking at? The department's maintenance shop at 106 Bell Road answers at (479) 597-6486.

That question matters before you buy land at the edge of town. The state's onsite wastewater rule (section 4.1) requires a sewer hookup, not a new septic system, when a public sewer is within 300 feet and can be reached without crossing a neighbor's property. Ask first, and you may skip the perc test and soil pits entirely.

What the soil survey says about ground near Greenwood

We ran the USDA's soil data (NRCS survey area AR131, the same records behind the free Web Soil Survey) for a box about five miles on a side centered on town. Roughly 95 percent of the mapped soils in it rate very limited for a conventional septic absorption field. The soils, and why they rate that way:

• Mountainburg, about a third of the box: bedrock close to the surface, large stones, and seepage at the bottom of the soil, where effluent can reach fractured rock before the soil has treated it.
• Leadvale and Taft, about 40 percent between them: a saturated zone high in the soil for part of the year, plus slow water movement. Cane, another 9 percent, has the same two problems.
• Enders, about an eighth: slow water movement through the subsoil, bedrock and slope.

Countywide the picture is similar, with one difference from across the river. Of about 316,000 acres of major soils in Sebastian County, some 296,000 are very limited, and a wet layer high in the soil is a limitation on about 149,000 acres. In Crawford County it's about 59,000. Around Greenwood that wet layer is the thing to plan for. A field on Leadvale or Taft can work all summer and then show soggy grass or slow drains after a wet spring, when the water table rises into the trenches. If that's happening at your place, read drain field problems before paying for a pump-out that won't fix it. Lots that can't pass the soil evaluation for a standard field often end up with an aerobic treatment unit, which needs a service contract and an alarm someone pays attention to.

Sebastian County permits and records

The septic file for a Greenwood-area house sits with the Arkansas Department of Health through the Sebastian County Health Unit in Fort Smith, (479) 452-8600 (ADH local health unit directory). Ask for the onsite wastewater record for the address. When a file exists, it can show the tank size, the type of system and the layout of the field, which is the quickest way to find a lid nobody has seen in a decade. Buyers should pull it before closing and hold it up against what the septic inspection finds. Homes north of the river use a different office; see septic service in Van Buren and Crawford County.

How old Greenwood's houses are

Greenwood is newer than the county around it. In the Census Bureau's 2020–2024 American Community Survey (Census Reporter profile), the median home in the city was built in 1995, against 1981 for Sebastian County and 1987 for Arkansas. About 61 percent of the city's 4,121 housing units went up in 1990 or later, and only 26 percent before 1980, compared with 49 percent for the county. Those figures count the city, most of it on sewer, but they point to a timing issue for the septic houses outside it: a system put in with a house from the 1990s or early 2000s is now 20 to 35 years old. The EPA's septic system FAQ puts the working life of many drain fields at roughly 25 to 30 years, so a lot of those fields are reaching it now. An older field that has never been pumped on schedule tends to get there sooner.

Usual calls from the Greenwood area

• A first pump-out in years, often after a house changes hands. Check the interval with the septic pumping calculator, and see septic tank pumping for what a proper visit includes.
• Wet-season trouble on the high-water-table soils: gurgling, slow tubs or a wet patch over the field. The septic backup checklist covers what to check first.
• Repairs to baffles, outlet lines and pumps on systems from the 1990s and 2000s: septic repair.
• New systems on acreage, which start with soil pits and an ADH permit: septic installation.

Call the number on this page and we'll connect you with a licensed septic pro who works the Greenwood end of the county.