SepticRecord

Fayette County

Septic services in Williston, Tennessee

Operators based within 12 miles of Williston

Listed by where the business is, not by who it says it serves. Every operator here holds a current state permit, and the address it is placed by comes from the state's own published list — so this is a checkable claim rather than a service-area promise. A Tennessee installer permit is valid statewide, so operators further out can work here too; these are simply the ones closest to you.

Soil and septic suitability around Williston

The USDA has already rated this ground for exactly one use: a septic tank absorption field. Within 4 miles of Williston — 32,006 acres across 73 soil map units — it rates 74.6% of the land very limited for that use and 1.3% somewhat limited, leaving 1.1% with no rated limitation.

What the limitation actually is

A rating on its own tells you nothing you can act on. The reasons do, and around Williston the leading one is depth to saturated zone on 61.6% of the mapped area, followed by flooding on 20.5%. In full:

Limiting featureShare of areaWhat it means on site
Depth to saturated zone61.6%A seasonal water table sits too close to the surface
Flooding20.5%The site floods often enough to matter
Seepage, bottom layer12.6%The layer beneath the trench is porous enough that effluent could reach groundwater without being filtered
Slope10.9%The ground is too steep for a conventional field
Filtering capacity0.4%The soil drains so fast it would not filter the effluent

Shares overlap: most soils here are limited for more than one reason at once, so these do not sum to 75.9%.

The soils themselves

The named soils and land types that make up most of the ground around Williston. Grenada alone accounts for 31.6% of it.

Soil or land typeShareDrainageSlopeDepth to bedrockSeptic rating
Grenada31.6% Moderately well drained 0 to 12% None in profile Very limited
Gullied land19.2% Well drained 5 to 30% None in profile Not rated
Collins12.4% Moderately well drained 0 to 2% None in profile Very limited
Loring7% Moderately well drained 2 to 20% None in profile Very limited
Smithdale6.2% Well drained 8 to 30% 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.

What that means if you are building or repairing here

A seasonal water table

Some of the ground around Williston carries a water table that rises close to the surface for part of the year and is nowhere to be seen for the rest of it. A field built into saturated soil does not treat effluent and does not drain, and the soil does not have to be wet on the day it is looked at for that to be true — the evidence is in the profile, as mottling and grey colours, which is one of the reasons the work is done by someone trained to read a soil pit rather than by timing water in a hole in August.

Area of interest: a 4-mile radius around the USGS Geographic Names centre point for Williston (GNIS 1304614, 35.1576, -89.3684), 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: Fayette County, Tennessee (2025-08-28). Retrieved 2026-09-09.

This is a survey, not a soil map for your lot. A permit needs a high-intensity map of the specific parcel, produced by a TDEC-approved soil consultant — see soil map vs perc test.

By service

Permitting in Fayette County

Septic permitting in Fayette County is administered by the State of Tennessee, not the county health department. See the Fayette County detail →