LANCASTER — A 77-year-old central Pennsylvania man who still uses an outhouse has run afoul of regulations that could cost him tens of thousands of dollars.

Wilson Huyett was informed by Salisbury Township officials that his outhouse has to go. They said he had to replace it with a septic system with three underground tanks and a sand mound. Huyett estimates the cost at $20,000.

“I’m not going to spend that much money to put something in I don’t really need,” the self-reliant Huyett told a newspaper.

He insists the outhouse on his 140-acre farm, separated from his closest neighbors by a quarter mile of fields and woods, is not bothering anybody. He lives alone in a farmhouse that may date to the 1700s.

“You can’t smell nothing,” he said of his privy. “I put lime in it.”

After his last outhouse was blown over by a storm several years ago, Huyett bought a new one. Last year he received a letter saying he had to pump out his septic tank every three years, prompting him to notify the township he had nothing to clean. He was told the septic system was mandatory.