A cesspool that's overflowing or backing up means raw sewage can reach your yard, basement, or plumbing fixtures. If sewage is inside your home, we connect you with a cleanup specialist.
An overflowing cesspool is a health hazard, not just a plumbing inconvenience — contact and exposure to raw sewage can spread bacteria and pathogens within hours.
When sewage has reached inside the house, we connect you with a local cleanup specialist. Pumping the cesspool itself is septic work, which our line does not connect; call a cesspool pumping company for that.
Call now, or can it wait?
Call now if
Sewage is coming up into a tub, toilet or floor drain.
Effluent is surfacing in the yard where children or pets can reach it.
The cover has shifted or the ground over the ring is sinking — a collapsing ring is a fall hazard, so keep everyone off it.
It can usually wait for a scheduled visit if
Drains are slow but still clear, and nothing is surfacing.
You do not know when it was last pumped and want it checked.
What Suffolk County measures for cesspool overflow
109 of the 155 areas we cover in Suffolk County are unsewered, and a further 30 are only partially sewered. On-site disposal is the norm here rather than the exception.
A cesspool disperses into the ground around it, so the depth to groundwater is its working margin. Across Suffolk County that median is about 31 ft, but it ranges from 4 ft to 153 ft — which is why the answer is different from one area to the next.
Cesspool Overflow drivers across Suffolk County, town by town
Town
Areas
Unsewered
Partly sewered
Median water table
Babylon
13
3
3
12 ft
Brookhaven
44
31
13
46 ft
East Hampton
8
8
0
36 ft
Huntington
20
16
4
100 ft
Islip
23
11
5
13 ft
Riverhead
7
5
2
25 ft
Shelter Island
2
2
0
30 ft
Smithtown
8
6
2
83 ft
Southampton
20
18
1
26 ft
Southold
10
9
0
20 ft
Counts and medians of the areas we cover in each town, measured over developed land. An
area spanning two towns is counted under the first. Your own street can differ — each
area page has its own figures. Sources and limits.
What the cesspool overflow job actually involves
So you know what you are agreeing to, and can tell a thorough quote from a cheap one.
Pump the system down to stop the immediate overflow.
Establish whether the failure is capacity or drainage — how fast it refills is the diagnostic.
Inspect the structure for a collapsed ring or a blocked inlet.
Advise on repair against replacement, including where a sewer connection is planned.
Keep the tank and the house separate on the invoice. Pumping and repairing the system is septic work; if the overflow reached inside, sanitizing and drying that is restoration work, and the two are usually different visits by different firms.
What makes it worse
Adding a chemical 'restorer'. Nothing unclogs the soil interface, which is what usually fails.
Treating a shortening pump-out interval as normal.
Paving or building over the leaching area.
Directing roof or sump discharge into the same ground the system relies on.
Rules and programs worth knowing in Suffolk County
A failed cesspool cannot be replaced with another cesspool
Since July 1, 2019, Suffolk County's Sanitary Code has required that when an existing cesspool is replaced or retrofitted, the new system include a septic tank or an innovative/alternative (I/A) nitrogen-reducing system ahead of the leaching structure, with Department of Health Services approval. A like-for-like cesspool swap is no longer allowed.
Ask whether the work you are being quoted counts as a replacement under Article 6. That decides what has to be installed and whether approval is needed, and it is the question that separates a pump-out from a much larger job.
Suffolk County's Septic Improvement Program, run by the Department of Health Services, offers grants toward replacing a cesspool or septic system with an I/A nitrogen-reducing system on existing homes that are not connected to a sewer. New York State's Septic System Replacement Fund can add to it.
Amounts, eligibility and funding rounds change, so check the county's program page before committing to a replacement.
Overflow from a cesspool is sewage, and the industry standard, ANSI/IICRC S500, places sewage in Category 3: grossly contaminated, able to carry pathogens and harmful agents.
If it has reached a basement or living space, that is the category a cleanup should start from. Ask the specialist which category they recorded, because it decides what has to be cleaned, treated or removed.
The CDC's guidance for cleaning up sewage applies to cesspool overflow too: rubber boots, goggles and gloves, and cover any cut or wound with a waterproof bandage first. Keep children and pets off the wet ground until it has been dealt with.
Septic and cesspool failure is usually excluded from a standard homeowners policy as a maintenance matter. Damage inside the house from a resulting backup may be covered, often only with a water backup endorsement.
General guidance, not advice on your policy — coverage varies by insurer and endorsement, and
the wording is what decides it. Read yours, or ask your agent, before you need to.
If the basement bathroom pump failed
A basement toilet, shower or laundry sink sits below the pipe that carries waste out of the house, so it drains into a sealed basin and a sewage ejector pump lifts the waste up to that pipe. It is not the sump pump: a sump moves groundwater and rain, an ejector moves sewage.
A basement toilet or shower backing up while the fixtures upstairs drain normally
An alarm sounding from the basin, where one is fitted
Sewage odor or a wet floor around the sealed basin lid
The pump running without stopping, or staying silent, when a basement fixture is used
Stop using the basement fixtures and anything else that drains into that basin, and keep people and pets away from what has come up. Treat it as sewage: it is Category 3 water, and what it soaks generally has to be removed rather than dried.
Signs you need cesspool overflow help now
Sewage odor near the yard or cesspool cover
Slow-draining sinks, tubs, or toilets throughout the house
Standing water or soggy ground over the cesspool
Gurgling sounds from drains
Sewage backing up into a tub or floor drain
What to do before help arrives
Worth doing whether or not you call us.
Stop using water in the house — every flush and every wash adds to what is already overflowing.
Keep people and pets away from pooled water in the yard; treat it as contaminated.
Do not add chemicals or 'restorer' products. They do not restore soil permeability, which is what has usually failed.
Note when the system was last pumped. A shortening interval is the most useful thing you can tell the specialist.
If sewage has reached the house, leave the affected rooms closed off until it is cleaned properly.
How to keep it from happening again
Keep a record of pump-out dates. Intervals that keep shortening are the earliest warning a system gives.
Keep wipes, grease, paint and medication out of the drains.
Spread laundry across the week instead of doing it all in one day.
Fix running toilets and dripping taps — a steady trickle is a steady load on the ring.
Keep vehicles, sheds and patios off the ring and its cover, and know where the cover is.
Direct roof downspouts away from the leaching area.
Cesspool Overflow: common questions
Will pumping fix an overflowing cesspool?
It stops the overflow for now, but it does not fix why the cesspool filled. If the soil around it has stopped absorbing, it will fill again, and a cesspool that needs pumping again within weeks is usually telling you that. Ask the specialist how quickly it refilled and what they saw when it was open.
Can I keep using water while it is backing up?
Use as little as you can until it has been pumped. Everything that goes down a drain goes into a system that already has nowhere to put it, laundry and long showers most of all. Flushing a toilet that is already backing up can bring sewage into the house.
Is a cesspool the same as a septic system?
No. A septic system has a tank that holds back solids and sends the liquid on to a separate drain field; a cesspool is a single pit that does both jobs in one place. That difference is why the county now limits what can replace a failed cesspool, as the rules section above explains.
Pump, repair or replace: what is the difference?
A pump-out empties the cesspool and buys time. A repair fixes a part that failed, such as a blocked inlet pipe, a cracked cover or a collapsed ring. Replacement is for a system whose surrounding soil no longer absorbs, and in Suffolk a failed cesspool cannot simply be replaced with another cesspool, as the rules section above explains.
What are the signs that a cesspool is full?
Drains slow down throughout the house, the lowest ones first. Toilets gurgle, there is a sewage smell outdoors, and the ground over the cesspool is wet or unusually green. Sewage backing up into a tub or floor drain is the last sign, not the first.
Sewage is backing up into the house from the cesspool. Who do I call?
There are two jobs. A cesspool pumping company empties the system and finds out why it filled. What came into the house is a sewage cleanup, which is a water damage specialist's work. Our line connects you for the cleanup inside. For pumping, call a cesspool pumping company directly.
Local conditions change what causes this and how it behaves, so each area where the
drivers behind cesspool overflow are actually present gets its own page with that
area's measured data. 139 of the 155 areas we cover
qualify; 30 of those pages are published so far and the rest are being added.