What San Joaquin County, CA's soil rates for a septic system
Very limited
88.5% of San Joaquin County, CA's surveyed soil comes back "Very limited" in USDA's own SSURGO data, the county's dominant condition for a septic absorption field. A standard gravity system routinely fails on ground like this; the same share of the county falls in USDA's worst absorption-field bucket outright. San Joaquin County, CA is 1,392.301 square miles with a population of 816,108.
What San Joaquin County's reading doesn't cover
San Joaquin County's rating is an average across the whole county, not a promise about any one lot inside it. A local percolation test, typically $750-$1,850 (around $1,300 typical), is the only way to know what one lot in San Joaquin County will actually do.
What a system would cost here
With 88.5% of San Joaquin County rating "Very limited", a standard gravity system is not a safe assumption here. The engineered-system range, $10,000-$40,000 (mound or aerobic treatment), is the more realistic number to plan around, against $3,000-$8,000 for a conventional system on the rare lot that passes.
Where this sits nationally
Nationally, San Joaquin County, CA is the 1,415-most-constrained of 3,058 rated counties for septic soil. Within California alone it ranks 38 of 57.
Further reading
How this rating is built, and its real limits · Conventional vs. engineered septic systems