French Letter: In the merde

If you live in the countryside in France, you will be all too familiar with the acronym SPANC — not, as you might imagine (or hope), the calling card of Ms Whiplash — but the Service Public d’Assainissement Non-Collective, the governing body of the nation’s septic tanks. 

For centuries, indeed since William the Conqueror was a lad, and long before that, France’s privies were a private matter, the upkeep and content of which were left to the discretion, or otherwise, of the individual. Quite what it all added up to I am in no position to say, but it must have been considerable. 

It certainly was in the case of our late neighbour Alexis, whose toilet occupied pride of place on the earth floor of his hen-house, next to a bucket of well-water that served as a flush. How the hens didn’t fly the coop or why the toilet didn’t explode, I will never know. But the earth certainly moved and I was not surprised to learn that after Alexis’s demise, a council excavator, driven by a man wearing breathing apparatus, had to be summoned to remove the final traces of his mortal existence. 

It was not long after this unsavoury episode (concluded, I am glad to say, while my wife and I were in New York) that we received our first communication from the newly-established SPANC. Our fosse septique, or septic tank, had been inspected and found wanting. It was too old, too small and, worst of all, directly under the house, beneath the floor of our basement, rather than extending out into the adjacent meadow. 

Due warning was given. We must, within 12 months, install a completely new system, with tanks, inspection hatches, and ventilation, feeding into a drainage field some less than feasible distance from the house. 

We weren’t the only ones, of course. Millions of rural households were similarly affected. Fosse replacement, previously a cottage industry, became overnight one of the surest and quickest ways to make a fortune. 

We were lucky. The husband of a friend of ours was a small-time building contractor who owned his own JCB. He had also, as it happened, recently installed a new fosse at his own recently acquired house and was more than ready to do the necessary. Even better, he could do it in the spring prior to our arrival from America at the end of May. 

What followed was like a small war. Our side and front gardens were excavated to a depth of some two metres. Two large plastic tanks were then sunk into the earth, the second of which boasts a capacity of 3,000 litres. A grease trap and no fewer than four inspection hatches completed the operation, with an elegant, chromium-plated ventilation pipe as the cherry on top. 

Weeks later, the inspector called. He pored over the plans for the completed work, peered into the hatches and prodded the earth. We waited. Would the Man from Del Monte say yes? He looked at us, nodded gravely and indicated that no arrests need be made. We were in the clear. 

Or so we thought. But then, two months ago, we received a letter from SPANC. Ten years had passed and the time had come for our system to be re-evaluated. An inspector would call between the hours of 9 am and midday on 12 April to ensure that our fosse presented no sanitary risk and had no negative environmental impact. To this end, we were instructed to be available on-site and to answer all relevant questions. 

As it happens, he never showed. Instead, one month later, we received a second letter in which we were informed that the inspector, for reasons that were not disclosed, had been obliged to cancel the previous rendezvous and that a new date had been fixed for 25 May. 

This time, he turned up and we await the results of his labours. An email from SPANC has in the meantime informed me that a report can be expected within two weeks and that any follow-up work felt to be necessary would have to be carried out within 12 months, at a cost to me, in the worst case, of as much as 10,000 euros. 

Two of my friends in the area are going through the same process. One has been told that his system, installed just 13 years ago, had caused a bit of a stink at SPANC, so the original contractor (fortunately still in business) has been given the task of installing an upgrade. Another, aged 81, was ordered to install new waste pipes and to reverse the order in which his filtration tanks go about their task. “I knew there had to be something wrong,” he told me the other evening, “when I realised that I was on first-name terms with the fellow who empties our fosse.”