SepticRecord

Obion County

Septic services in Kenton, Tennessee

Operators based within 12 miles of Kenton

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 Kenton

The USDA has already rated this ground for exactly one use: a septic tank absorption field. Within 4 miles of Kenton — 32,013 acres across 60 soil map units — it rates 90.1% of the land very limited for that use and 8.7% 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 Kenton the leading one is depth to saturated zone on 87.6% of the mapped area, followed by flooding on 36.8%. In full:

Limiting featureShare of areaWhat it means on site
Depth to saturated zone87.6%A seasonal water table sits too close to the surface
Flooding36.8%The site floods often enough to matter
Slow water movement10.6%Water moves through the soil too slowly for a drain field to keep up
Ponding3.7%Water stands on the surface
Slope2.9%The ground is too steep for a conventional field

Shares overlap: most soils here are limited for more than one reason at once, so these do not sum to 98.8%.

The soils themselves

The named soils and land types that make up most of the ground around Kenton. Loring alone accounts for 21.9% of it.

Soil or land typeShareDrainageSlopeDepth to bedrockSeptic rating
Loring21.9% Moderately well drained 2 to 20% None in profile Very limited
Falaya17.5% Somewhat poorly drained 0 to 2% None in profile Very limited
Grenada12.9% Moderately well drained 2 to 12% None in profile Very limited
Feliciana10.4% Well drained 2 to 30% None in profile Somewhat limited
Routon9.3% 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.

What that means if you are building or repairing here

A seasonal water table

Some of the ground around Kenton 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.

Ground that floods

The bottomland around Kenton floods, and a septic system in it fails in the least pleasant way available. Flooding lifts tanks, backfills fields with silt, and pushes untreated effluent to the surface where people walk. The practical consequence is straightforward and it is about siting rather than design: the field goes out of the floodplain, even when that puts it a long way from the house, and a lot whose only buildable ground is bottomland may not support a system at all.

Area of interest: a 4-mile radius around the USGS Geographic Names centre point for Kenton (GNIS 1290092, 36.2023, -89.0123), 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: Gibson County, Tennessee (2025-08-28), Obion County, Tennessee (2025-08-29), Weakley County, Tennessee (2025-08-29). 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.

Permitting in Obion County

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