Home building in decline, says septic data

If septic tank installations are any indication — and they may be the best we have — the pace of new home construction looks to be slowing in Jefferson County.

After booming during and just after the Covid pandemic, the number of county-issued permits for septic tanks and drain fields has fallen nearly 40 percent in two years, from 171 in 2022 to 98 last year. County Sanitarian Megan Bullock expects around the same number in 2025 and a slight decline in the years to come. 

This data comes with caveats. First off, it doesn’t include Boulder and Whitehall, municipalities that handle their own permitting. Also, a minority of septic tank requests are not for new construction but for replacements – and county statistics do not delineate. But in the absence of reliable recent housing starts data, septic permits serve as a reasonable proxy, and an indication that homebuilding is no longer booming.