Arkansas requires a state license to install a septic system, and the license is issued by the
state. The duty attaches to the person doing the work rather than to the ground it is done in:
Ark. Code Ann. § 14-236-115(a) provides that “Each installer who operates within the State of
Arkansas, regardless of the location of his home office, must become registered by the Division
of Environmental Health Protection of the Department of Health.” The chapter backs that with a
general prohibition at § 14-236-110 — “No person shall construct, alter, repair, or extend or
cause to be constructed, altered, repaired, or extended any individual sewage disposal system
contrary to the provisions of this chapter and other applicable rules.” — and with an
enforcement limb at § 14-236-115(f), which subjects an installer who has not registered to the
chapter’s penalties. Arkansas states the duty as a command on the person plus a penalty rather
than as a tidy prohibition on unlicensed work, and the three provisions together are what make
it one. The credential is also examined, which is the fact a reader can go and check: rule
§ 14.1 provides that “The registration will be issued by the Department or its Authorized Agent
upon successful completion of an examination and compliance with the provisions of the Rules.”
One note on vocabulary, because the words differ and the credential does not — the statute
calls it a registration and the rule calls it both a registration and a license.
What the installer holds is not what the system needs, and telling the two apart is the
difference between sending a contractor on the right errand and the wrong one. The license
attaches to the installer who operates within the state, wherever the home office may be. The permit attaches to the lot, and it
is the property owner’s to obtain: rule § 4.5 makes it unlawful to begin work “until the owner
first obtains a valid Permit for Construction issued by the Department or its Authorized
Agent”, and Ark. Code Ann. § 14-236-112(a) is the statutory side of the same instrument. So a
job can have a registered installer standing on it and still be unlawful to begin, because the
Permit for Construction runs to the owner. Reading only for the permit
and stopping there gets Arkansas wrong in the other direction as well: both instruments exist
here, and the one that binds the contractor is the statutory registration with a penalty
attached to it.
Where a contractor is actually served is a county office, and the officer behind that counter
works for the state. The rule’s term of art for that officer is the Authorized Agent, defined
at rule § 2.3 as “The Environmental Health Specialist assigned to the County, or Business Unit
by the Department.” — a department employee stationed locally rather than a county employee.
Rule § 4.8 completes it: “For those cities or counties with Authorized Agents, the
Authorized Agent shall be the Authorized Agent of the Department.” No county in Arkansas issues
this credential and none can, so a reader sent to the county for it has been sent to a body
that does not issue it — and a reader sent to a desk in the capital has been sent past the
county office where the Department’s own officer will stamp the work. And rule § 4.7
requires the installer to notify that Authorized Agent, the Department’s officer assigned to the
county, before the work starts.
The duty has bounds, and they are the chapter’s own rather than anything read into it. Ark.
Code Ann. § 14-236-104 is captioned “Certain individual systems excepted from chapter.”, and
subsection (c) reads “The requirements of this chapter shall not apply to any individual sewage
disposal system or alternate and experimental system which is situated on a tract of land ten
(10) acres or larger, in which the field line or sewage disposal line is no closer than two
hundred feet (200′) to the property line.” The registration duty sits inside that chapter.
Two
things have to be said beside that, and this page says both rather than picking the tidier one.
Whether a particular tract clears the two-hundred-foot set-back limb of § 14-236-104(c) is a
fact about the site, and no page may resolve it. The second bound is in the chapter’s own statement of purpose at § 14-236-102(b)(2), which is to
“Require registration of all installers of individual sewage disposal systems by the Division
of Sanitarian Services of the Department of Health, with the individual homeowner retaining all
rights to install and repair his system in accordance with the provisions of this chapter”. A
homeowner on his own system is a different question from a contractor on someone else’s.
A contractor installing for hire on an ordinary lot sits in neither of the two classes of work
the chapter’s own words place outside the duty — a qualifying ten-acre tract and a homeowner on
his own system — and neither is a reason to state the duty more loosely than the chapter does.
Arkansas does not stop at the installer. One department runs a small family of practitioner
licenses around the installer, each cut by function rather than graded by system complexity,
and the one a reader will hunt for under the wrong word is the design-and-evaluation
credential. The rule never uses the noun inspector. The person it certifies for that work is
the Designated Representative, defined at rule § 2.9 as “A person certified by the Department
to make percolation tests, system designs, and inspections subject to the Authorized Agent’s
final approval.” That credential is unavoidable on a permitted job, because rule § 4.10.1
provides that “Part I of the Permit Application form shall be completed by a Designated
Representative and approved by the Department or its Authorized Agent prior to initiating
construction.”, and rule § 4.10.2.2 adds that “The inspection may be made by the Authorized
Agent, or may be made by the Designated Representative at the approval of the Authorized
Agent.” Rule § 13.1 puts a registration duty on every Designated Representative operating in
the state. What that does to a schedule is plain: the paperwork sequence, not the soil, is what
delays the job, because the installer cannot start before someone else’s credential has done
its part.
A third credential in the family runs after the job closes rather than before it starts. Rule
§ 12 provides that “Owners of holding tanks, or alternative wastewater systems are required to
maintain a Monitoring Contract with a Monitoring Person registered by the Department for the
life of the system.” and adds that “No homeowner shall be allowed to monitor their own
system.”, while rule § 12.6 provides that “Monitoring personnel shall be registered by the
Department.” Complexity is what decides whether a job engages that class at all — rule § 9.2
contemplates special training before an installer may put in certain alternate systems, and
rule § 9.3 lets the Department require a Designated Representative to oversee construction of
unusual or rarely used designs — but none of that creates a junior and a senior installer
license, and no tier should be built out of the label a license-lookup screen happens to
print. One warning
about names, because all three are the agency’s own: the statute calls the maintenance class a
certified maintenance person, the rule calls it Certified Monitoring Personnel and the
individual a Monitoring Person, and the department’s own notices call the credential an onsite
maintenance provider license. That is one credential under three names, not three licenses. A
firm that installs and then monitors is carrying an exposure that ends and an exposure that
does not, on one account.
Pumping is licensed too, and not as a tier of anything above it. The septage credential comes
from the same department under a different act and a different rule, and the onsite rule’s own
enumeration of its licensees at § 2.27 — installers, Designated Representatives, certified
monitoring personnel and septic tank manufacturers — does not include the cleaner. The rule
that does create it states its own prohibition in one sentence, at § VII: “No person, firm,
corporation, partnership, or association shall engage in the business of septic tank cleaning
or the transportation of septage, sewage or sludge for compensation without a valid … license
as provided herein.” It is a business credential rather than a vehicle permit — the licensee is
“The licensed owner or operator of a business, firm, or corporation engaged in the business of
cleaning septic tanks, marine sanitation devices, portable toilets, and or the transporting of
septage or sewage.” — and it reaches hauling for compensation as much as it reaches cleaning.
The operating conditions that come with it matter more to an insurance reader than the license
does: § IV(A) provides that “The disposal of sewage or septage by any method that violates any
state or federal law or rule is strictly prohibited.”, and § IV(B) makes land application at a
site that has not been inspected, approved and put on file with the department a violation in
itself. A business that installs and pumps therefore holds two licenses from the same
department under two separate rules, and treating the cleaner license as a tier of the
installer license misses one of them.
The onsite wastewater license carries no insurance condition and no bond condition of its own —
checked by reading the rule and the department’s combined statute-and-rule volume end to end,
neither of which uses the words insurance, bond or surety anywhere. The condition exists, but
it sits one tier up in a regime that is blind to this trade, and it is a workers compensation
condition rather than a general liability one. Arkansas licenses contractors separately through
the Arkansas Contractors Licensing Board on a test cut by the cost of the job rather than by
the trade — the same test would meet a roofing contractor in the same words — and that
board’s statute at Ark. Code
Ann. § 17-25-316(a) provides that “A contractor required to be licensed or registered by the
Contractors Licensing Board shall obtain and maintain workers’ compensation coverage as
required under the Workers’ Compensation Law, § 11-9-101 et seq.” Subsection (b) is the
enforcement half of it: “The board shall require proof of current workers’ compensation
coverage before issuing or renewing a license or registration to a contractor required to have
workers’ compensation coverage under the Workers’ Compensation Law § 11-9-101 et seq.” The
residential side carries its own version at § 17-25-514, with a carve-out for smaller home
improvement work. One thing this page will not do is tell a reader whether holding the health
department’s installer license is itself enough to engage the residential exemption at
§ 17-25-513(5) for a person licensed by another Arkansas agency and working within that
license. The text retrieved does not decide it, and a page that tells a reader that holding the
installer license exempts them, or that it does not, is guessing.
The coverage duty itself is where the numbers a septic business needs are not the numbers it
will hear repeated. The general rule is a headcount, and the Commission states it that way. But
the Commission’s own application for a certificate of non-coverage sets the thresholds out
together, and building work is not on the general one: coverage is required for employment “in
which three (3) or more employees are employed by the same employer”, “in which two (2) or more
employees are engaged in building or building repair work”, “in which one (1) or more employee
is employed by a contractor who subcontracts any part of his contract”, and “in which one (1)
or more employee is employed by a subcontractor”. The counting rule is not the one a reader
assumes either — in arriving at those numbers, employee “is defined to include, but is not
limited to, an owner, a sole proprietor, a partner or partners who devote full-time to the
partnership, a full-time employee, a part-time employee, and a volunteer.” A two-person crew
doing installation work is inside the building limb on the face of that document, and a
one-person operation working under somebody else’s contract is inside the last limb. The
Commission says as much about its own general rule: “There are exceptions to the three-or-more
requirement, so employers with fewer than three should check with authorities before assuming
they do not fall under the Workers’ Compensation laws.”
Arkansas also runs election in both directions, and a contractor who has heard about one half
has heard half the regime. An owner can elect out: the Commission publishes an affidavit in
which a sole proprietor, a partner or a member of a limited liability company states that the
applicant “has elected to be excluded as an employee and from the mandatory insurance
requirement of the Arkansas workers’ compensation laws”, and the same document records that
this is not the route for corporate officers, whose exclusion is “handled directly by the
agent/carrier.” An employer the act does not reach can elect in: Commission Rule 099.06
provides that “When an employer not embraced by the Act elects to be governed by it as provided
by A.C.A. 11-9-102 and 11-9-403, the election shall continue until notice to the contrary is
filed with the Commission.” As for how the coverage is obtained, the Commission names two
lawful routes and no state fund sits in either of them: “The coverage is provided through a
Workers’ Compensation insurance policy or by the employer receiving state approval to be
self-insured for such purposes.”
Two of those duties are worth holding apart when the renewal paperwork lands: the installer
license imposes no insurance condition and no bond condition of its own, and the workers
compensation condition sits on the contractor license under § 17-25-316.
The sections below set out each axis beside the authority it rests on, with a link to
the document the words come from.
