SepticRecord

Beaufort County

Septic services in Harbor Island, South Carolina

Operators based within 12 miles of Harbor Island

Listed by where the business is, not by who it says it serves. Every operator here was on the SCDES Onsite Wastewater Contractors list on the date its record shows, and the address it is placed by comes from that same list, so this is a checkable claim rather than a service-area promise. A South Carolina licence is issued by the state, not by a county, so operators further out can work here too; these are simply the ones closest to you.

Soil and septic suitability around Harbor Island

The USDA has already rated this ground for exactly one use: a septic tank absorption field. Within 4 miles of Harbor Island — 24,819 acres across 14 soil map units — it rates 41.4% of the land very limited for that use and 0% somewhat limited, and almost none with no limitation at all.

What the limitation actually is

A rating on its own tells you nothing you can act on. The reasons do, and around Harbor Island the leading one is depth to saturated zone on 36.4% of the mapped area, followed by flooding on 28.2%. In full:

Limiting featureShare of areaWhat it means on site
Depth to saturated zone36.4%A seasonal water table sits too close to the surface
Flooding28.2%The site floods often enough to matter
Slow water movement26.5%Water moves through the soil too slowly for a drain field to keep up
Ponding15.8%Water stands on the surface
Seepage, bottom layer14.7%The layer beneath the trench is porous enough that effluent could reach groundwater without being filtered

Shares overlap: most soils here are limited for more than one reason at once, so these do not sum to 41.4%.

The soils themselves

The named soils and land types that make up most of the ground around Harbor Island. Bohicket alone accounts for 15.4% of it.

Soil or land typeShareDrainageSlopeDepth to bedrockSeptic rating
Bohicket15.4% Very poorly drained 0 to 1% None in profile Very limited
Capers11.1% Very poorly drained 0 to 2% None in profile Very limited
Fripp2.9% Excessively drained 6 to 15% None in profile Very limited
Lakeland2% Excessively drained 0 to 6% None in profile Very limited
Lynn Haven2% Poorly drained 0 to 2% None in profile Very limited

“None in profile” means SSURGO records no bedrock or other restrictive layer within the depth it describes, not that none exists.

Area of interest: a 4-mile radius around the USGS Geographic Names centre point for Harbor Island (GNIS 2812934, 32.4083, -80.4382), chosen because five of this state's communities are unincorporated and have no boundary to use, and because the lots that need a septic permit are in the ring around a town rather than inside it. Soil from USDA-NRCS Soil Data Access, SSURGO interpretation “ENG - Septic Tank Absorption Fields”, area-weighted by mapped acreage and by each component's share of its map unit. Survey areas: Beaufort County, South Carolina (2025-09-03), Colleton County, South Carolina (2025-09-03). Retrieved 2026-09-18.

This is a survey, not an evaluation of your lot. The permit decision rests on the site evaluation SCDES carries out for the specific parcel.

By service

Permitting in Beaufort County

Septic permitting in Beaufort County is handled by the State of South Carolina, through the Department of Environmental Services, not by the county. See the Beaufort County detail →