everything you always wanted to know about RV septic systems*

*plus a lot you probably didn't

Before Antonio can dump his septic tank, he has to go to the pawnshop.

Same thing with filling a prescription for his girlfriend, Tina; or getting something to eat; or filling the propane tank so he can take a hot shower. He can’t take a shower until he dumps his tank, anyway, because the RV’s ‘gray water’ tank is full, too, and the shower water will run off into the street.

Unfortunately, he and Tina are almost out of things to pawn. Already, they’ve pawned most of Tina’s jewelry, and even her car—a Lexus SUV they loaned for just $2,500 and weren’t able to get back.

Now, they only have a couple items left—a gold ring and a pair of diamond earrings Tina’s mother gave her. They’re not expecting much. A pawnshop rejected the ring last week—guy at the counter said it wasn’t real gold.

Antonio parks around the corner from a different pawnshop on Lincoln Blvd, where no one in the store can see the RV, and goes inside alone.

Tina stays in the van. She sits on the bed, right across from the door, holding her Chihuahua, Cody, in her lap. She’s quiet, occasionally looking out the front windshield.

“He’s not gonna get anything,” Tina says. “I hope he gets a hundred.”

A few minutes later, Antonio comes running back towards the van, jewelry in hand.

“See,” Tina says. “I told you he wasn’t gonna get anything.”

They offered him $100 for the ring and $250 for the earrings, he says. “You sure you want to sell the earrings? We could just sell the ring.” It’s the only time either of them acknowledges any sentimental values the items might hold.

“Yes, yes, Jesus, just sell it!”

The money changes everything inside the van. When Antonio returns with bills in hand, Tina calls Rite Aid to refill half her prescription. Antonio starts driving north towards Dockweiler State Beach, the only place within 30 miles where RVs can legally dump waste water. He talks almost nonstop, grinning now, looking back into the cabin of the van as he drives, explaining why so few RVs in the Rose lot dump legally. Cody jumps on his lap, sticking his head out the window.



You hardly need to live in an RV to be conscious of water’s value in Southern California, but RV-dwellers experience this fact on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Basic tasks like washing the dishes, taking a shower, and using the toilet require a staggering commitment of time and energy towards acquiring and disposing of water. Doing it all legally adds a serious, potentially prohibitive financial investment to the equation.

Like most RVs, Antonio’s vehicle has three tanks—the freshwater tank, which holds 80 gallons of water; the gray water tank, which traps runoffs from the sink and the shower; and the septic (or ‘black water’) tank, which holds waste from the toilet. The black water tank fills up every two weeks or so, the gray water tank every week. Both are supposed to be dumped only at official RV dumping sites.

The process of dumping the tanks is easy. At Dockweiler RV Park, Antonio drains the two waste tanks from a valve on the side of the van, through a black hose, into a hole in the pavement. Then he uses a white hose to pump fresh water from a faucet into a different valve on the side of the van. The whole process cost $10, and takes just 15 minutes.

There are other costs, however, some of them harder to calculate. Dockweiler RV park is almost 8 miles away from the Rose lot where so many RV-dwellers park. Many of the vehicles in the Rose lot simply can’t make it that far—Tommy and Shawn can’t even start their vehicles, and others, for fear of ending up like Tommy, won’t risk driving their vans farther than a quarter mile—from the lot to wherever they park at night.

In addition, the drive itself costs Antonio about $15 dollars in gas—as much money as he makes most days. So instead of making the drive every week, Antonio, like most others in the Rose lot, dumps his gray water down the storm drain.

“I don’t feel guilty about that at all,” he says. “There’s nothing harmful in there. Worst you’re gonna find is maybe a couple vegetables from the sink.”

It’s not always easy to tell when the gray water tank is full—the gauge on his 1977 Winnebago was defunct long before Antonio bought the van last year. The only way he knows for sure that the tank is full is when it starts leaking onto the street through an overflow valve. The leaking, of course, is also illegal, punishable with a $900 fine. Once, when Tina did a bunch of dishes and the tank overflowed, the cops threatened to call in the hazmat team and shut down the whole Rose lot.

But there’s no question when the black water tank needs dumping: waste backs up into the toilet, and the smell in the bathroom becomes unbearable.

For the last two days, Antonio has shit in plastic bags, which he discretely deposits in dumpsters, and pissed in plastic bottles, which he empties into the storm drain. Tina’s continued to piss in the toilet.

“I had to go to the bathroom this morning and I thought I was gonna puke,” she says.

Many RV-dwellers won’t use the bathrooms in their vehicles. Tommy always uses plastic bags and bottles. Others use the bathrooms next to the Rose lot, a spot many drug addicts use to shoot up. A few keep gym memberships just for access to running water.

The year before Antonio met Tina, when he was living in a van that didn’t have a bathroom, he used to go to McDonald’s to use the bathroom every morning, bringing the cup he already had with him. He called it the ‘Antonio Combo’: a shit and a refill.

Finally, there are those who use the RV bathrooms but don’t go to Dockweiler to dump. Antonio says that last night, he saw three vans pull up behind the dumpsters at the edge of the lot and “do the dirty deed.” While dumping gray water is tacitly accepted in the RV community, dumping black water is not. It’s done in secret, in the dark, anonymously. No one in the Rose lot will admit to it.

One of the main accusations opponents of RVs level is that these kinds of illegal dumping are hazardous to the environment and public health alike. Yet, as Antonio sees it, the problem could be very easily solved. The dumping station at the Dockweiler RV Park is just a line that connects to the sewer system. Wealthier people, who use RVs recreationally, often have similar lines installed at their homes.
“If you just put one of those lines in at every gas station, and you made it free, you wouldn’t get people dumping illegally,” Antonio says. “Or put one in at the Rose lot. Then everyone would use it.”

“Yeah, but they don’t want to encourage RVs to park there,” Tina says.



This is one of the many Catch-22s for the Rose lot community: it is illegal to dump except at official sites, but there are no dumping sites around.

On the way back from Dockweiler, Antonio stops to refill the propane tank. He buys $22 of propane for hot showers, enough for a couple months. $24 for Tina’s pain medication, for a list of maladies that includes a spinal fusion, a removed adrenal gland, and most recently a removed gall bladder. $15 for Chinese food. $20 for weed. In three hours since they pawned Tina’s jewelry, they’ve spent $106—nearly a third of what they made.

And there are more errands, more expenses. Antonio wants to go to the DMV. Last week, he got pulled over in Santa Monica. He doesn’t have a valid registration, because he hasn’t had a smog check, and before he can pass a smog check, he has to weld a new tail pipe onto the roof. The cop said the only reason he didn’t have the vehicle towed was he didn’t want to leave Antonio homeless.

“You can’t just go to the DMV today,” Tina says. “You know how long that’s gonna take to get the smog check and then go?”

“I just don’t wanna go through another weekend stressing out about my home being towed and me sitting on the curb wondering what I’m gonna do. The only thing preventing us from getting a valid registration and being completely legal is the smog certificate. Right now, if I run into a dick cop, he can just tow it away.”

But Tina’s right—he doesn’t have time to make it to the DMV. Instead, they sit in the van, shades drawn, at the corner of Lincoln and Vernon. Tina sits on the bed, eating Chinese food; Antonio leans over the dishes in the drying rack next to the sink, smoking from a water bong.

When they get back to the Rose lot, Tina wants to take a shower.

“Don’t use all the water,” Antonio says. “I have to have the freshwater tank nearly full for her, or she’ll run out.”

“I’m a girl,” she says. “It’s easy for you.”

“Just don’t take half an hour again. Fuck, it’s not a house.”

Antonio steps outside to say hi to Peter, whose RV is parked a couple spots over. Peter’s trying to give away a microwave he and his wife can’t use. Antonio says he can’t use it either.

“It’s such a hassle to do all this stuff,” Tina says. “Such a pain in the ass. That’s why I’m trying to convince him to move into an apartment. He doesn’t want to pay rent, but, I mean, everybody does it. Fuck, what’re you supposed to do? I wanna be able to take a shower whenever I want and not have to worry about running out of water. I can’t live like this forever.”

She’s not used to this—neither of them is. Antonio is happy enough living in the van. He talks about getting another RV, or even a converted bus. But Tina wants out. She wants the kind of life she used to have before her mother died, back when she could afford a Lexus, diamond earrings, Louis Vuitton bags.

But neither of them has a job. Tina’s applying for disability, but has no idea if or when she’ll be approved. Antonio recently lost his most consistent audio editing gig. For the moment, the question is not when they can get an apartment, but how they’ll arrange their next hot shower.