Lowcountry environmental groups are celebrating a recent ruling by a circuit court judge about building large-scale septic tank systems.

The court ordered that public notice be posted when the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services considers a permit for one of these systems.

Representatives with the Coastal Conservation League are calling the ruling a big win, not just for clean water, but also for the public’s right to know what’s going on.

“The issue is, what we are seeing across the coast is [new tanks in] large, dense subdivisions in rural areas like Awendaw, Hollywood and Ravenel and they are doing so without a ton of public input about the water quality impacts that these septic tanks are going to have,” Riley Egger, a member of the Coastal Conservation League, said.