Soils Testing Process for Property Development in Montgomery County

Properties ineligible for public sewer must complete water table and percolation or sand mound testing to establish a sewage disposal area before being considered buildable. The dataset includes permit details, location coordinates, and processing dates for these soil tests. Columns such as LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, and Approved Date suggest it tracks the regulatory process for septic system approvals.

Use Cases

• Mapping permit locations and status using LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, and Approved Date.
• Analyzing processing timelines for soil tests using Processed Date and Approved Date.
• Filtering applications by jurisdiction or community using Council Districts, Councils, and Municipalities.
• Reviewing the scope of work for specific properties using Permit Number, Project Name, and Description of Work.

Strengths

• Contains precise geospatial coordinates (LATITUDE, LONGITUDE) for location analysis.
• Update frequency is daily, indicating potential for current data.
• Available in multiple machine-readable formats (CSV, JSON, XML).

Limitations

• Key metadata is missing or conflicting: row count, size, license, and author are unknown or listed as 'None' across platforms.
• The last updated date shows a future date (2026-05 15) on Socrata, conflicting with a past date (2026-04-12) on Data.gov, raising questions about data freshness.
• The Data.gov platform lists columns as 'unknown', providing less structural detail than Socrata.

Provenance

Source

data.montgomerycountymd.gov

Collection Method

Likely administrative records from a county permitting process.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated dates conflict: 2026-05-15 (Socrata) and 2026-04-12 (Data.gov).

Geography

Montgomery County, based on organization name and column references to Municipalities, STATE, and CITY.