Actually, it’s possible. They can put a plug in the service line to the house. They do it around here sometimes with abandoned houses to prevent illegal dumping of hazardous liquids.
I’m on a private well with public sewer. There’s no charge for water but the township charges everyone a flat rate for sewer. About 180 a quarter.
I’m not a fan of the flat rate it seems unfair to small households with one or two bathrooms to pay the same rate as a big house with 4 bathrooms and two kitchens. I once proposed we meter everyone’s water well and base the rates on water consumption. That was an interesting meeting.
And perhaps charge you interest as well (I’m sure the IRS do that, for example.)
Seriously, avoid future trauma - sort it asap.
I talked it over with my wife. She thinks maybe the $4k tap fee last year bought us a year of sewer service as well (kind of like paying first and last month’s up front when renting an apartment). Her thinking is, we wait for another 3 months-- that’s when we next get a property tax bill. If we don’t have sewer fees tacked onto that, or if we don’t get our first sewer bill after the 5th quarter of having sewer service, then we can inquire to the Township. If a mistake has been made, 5 quarters of back pay will be about $1000, which we can easily afford. If they try to make us pay late fees or something we’d fight it, but even if we lost that fight it’s not going to break the bank.
Wait and see and time will tell.
Or you could satisfy your curiosity today and look up your property record online. Either at the county level or township level. Also you might find here Municipal Directory | BS&A Online.
My record shows in addition to property details, I can see permits, taxes and sewer charges.
For years, I didn’t have a water meter - instead, we paid for water and sewer via a sort of flat rate. It was flat rate in the sense that it wasn’t metered but it wasn’t a flat rate in that two house with the same frontage would pay different rates if one had four bathrooms vs two or one was a single family house and the other had four apartments.
Thanks, nice resource I didn’t know existed. A lot of info about my property. It says there are no utility billing records for us (whether that means we’re off the hook, it’s a mistake, or I’m misinterpreting something, I don’t know). I need to create a login to view my property taxes. Have to poke around the site later when I have more time.
I know it’s now a moo point (like a cow’s opinion), but, even having put the money aside, it would still really suck to have to pay it back in one large lump.
mmm
A lot of them are old and don’t perform to reasonably modern pollution standards. Homeowners often don’t maintain them, so what otherwise be compliant still ends up being a source of pollution/contamination. They require a bunch of extra calculations and permitting when the building is altered with new fixtures/rooms to ensure they’re not being overburdened. They require regular inspections and certifications, which can be difficult and expensive when access lids are buried, broken, flooded, or in yards with aggressive dogs. There’s a lot of different kinds of systems so there’s just as many disparate maintenance requirements to keep track of. Whenever there are issues it requires re-inspection. They make more lots unbuildable than might otherwise be, especially if there’s an old system that’s already taken up the only available leach field area. If there’s a mix of sewer and septic, it means there’s fewer customers per length of sewer line, but that sewer line still had to be sized assuming everyone was hooked up. Overall they generate a ton of paperwork and bureaucracy, and the fees they collect often don’t cover those costs. Everyone being hooked up to one system is much easier to track and maintain.
As a homeowner, once the system fails and needs to be replaced, then you’re looking at an outlay equivalent to buying a new car. A fixed fee for sewer use does seem a bit odd, though it could very well be based on the size of the house/lot, number of bathrooms/bedrooms. Since there’s no cross-referencing with water usage in this case though, there’s no disincentive to flushing as much water down the drain as you want, so the fee needs to cover something closer to the worst-case-scenario than it might otherwise.
Welp, in that case I’m-a flushin’ and a flushin’, and running sink water all day long to make sure I gets my money’s worth!
JK, of course-- even if I was inclined to spite-waste well water to get my sewer usage worth, that’s probably a good way to burn out the well pump, and we’ve already been through 2 of those in 19 years here.
I live in a hi-rise and all water and natural gas are paid via a monthly assessment. In theory, I could run water all day and run my stove all day and it would cost me nothing more than normal use.
I suspect the building would get a sense that something is afoot and would investigate and that likely would become a big problem. Not to mention it’s just a lousy thing to do (I know you said you would not do that either, I am agreeing with you).
I think more than a few of us may have lived in apartments with free baseboard heat or radiator heat, sometimes with a defective valve. So you end up in January with 20F temps outside and the windows opened a few inches, to counteract the blast-furnace temperatures from the ancient heating system.
It feels so wasteful, but what else are you going to do?
Update time…because I’m sure so many of you have been waiting breathlessly for news on this matter 
.
So I said here:
We got our Summer tax bill, and no sewer fee tacked on. So we contacted the Township. Turns out the final inspection paperwork got lost or misplaced or something. Now things are sorted, and we get our first quarterly sewer bill in October-- thankfully no back payments required.
Back payments aren’t so bad, but you really don’t want them returning any effluent you didn’t pay for
It’s great when you can get things sorted out. Sounds like a good resolution. Thanks for the update.
I, for one, was hoping you got it fixed.
Not, breathlessly, but I did think about it occasionally.
Good deal.
That would be a shitty thing for them to do.
Depends. 
Grampers!
It would certainly piss me off.