Delaware requires a state-issued license to install an on-site wastewater treatment and
disposal system, and the duty is written as a prohibition rather than left to a rule. It is
7 Del. C. § 6032(a), quoted in full below, and it reaches percolation tests, soil evaluations
and design as well as installation. The installer class is Class E, the system contractor
license, and the class letter is the part a Delaware contractor actually goes by. It is also the
operative one: 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-4.2 makes holding the matching class the condition of
doing the work — “It shall be necessary to have the Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D,
Class E, Class F, Class H and/or Class I licenses in order to engage in the specified
activities under Section 4.1 of these Regulations.” The issuer is the state. 7 Del. C.
§ 6023(f) provides that “The Secretary shall have the exclusive power to grant or deny any
license required under subsections (a), (b), (c) and (d) of this section.”, and the department
states the same thing in its own words: “The DNREC Division of Water issues licenses for the
various professions involved in designing, installing and maintaining on-site wastewater
treatment and disposal systems.” There is no local counter to go to for it.
One thing bounds that section, and it is written on the face of the section itself.
7 Del. C. § 6032(d): “The license requirements shall not apply in a county which has been
delegated authority to issue septic tank permits pursuant to § 6003(d) of this title.” That
carve-out is geographic: it scopes where the license requirements apply, not who they reach. It runs backwards from the local
question most states raise — it does not let a county add a credential, it lets a delegated
county switch that section’s license requirements off — and the delegation route it points at
is permissive on its own terms. 7 Del. C. § 6003(d) provides that “A county which requests
authority to administer a system for granting or denying a septic tank permit, and which
satisfies the Secretary that it has the capability, including but not limited to regulations
and enforcement authority, may be authorized by the Secretary, for a term stated, to
administer such a system for the Secretary within that county.” Two things this page will not
do with that sentence. It will not tell you that a county issues this credential, because
7 Del. C. § 6023(f) keeps the power to grant or deny exclusively with the Secretary. And it
will not tell you the carve-out is empty, because no Delaware county is named as delegated in
those statutes, in the regulation or on the department’s own licensing pages — which is a fact
about those documents rather than a count of the orders a Secretary may have signed. The
carve-out is also narrower than the trade’s whole duty: § 6032(d) reaches the license
requirements of that section only, while the older septic tank installer prohibition at
7 Del. C. § 6023(b) sits in a different section and carries no such carve-out. That older
prohibition also admits something § 6032(a) does not: septic tank system work done under a
licensed installer’s supervision, as the text below sets out.
Delaware does not issue one septic license. It issues a family of them, and which letters a
company holds is the whole answer to what that company may lawfully do. 7 DE Admin. Code
7101-4.1: “The Department shall administer a program for the licensing of percolation testers,
system designers, soil scientists/site evaluators, system contractors, liquid waste haulers,
system inspectors and construction inspectors.” The department states the denominator in its
own words — “Groundwater discharge licenses are issued in eight different classes”. Class B
and Class C are the designer licenses, and the Class C route additionally requires
registration as a professional engineer, so one design job can sit behind two credentials at
once. Class D is the soil scientist and site evaluator, and that class is not an optional
preliminary: 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-5.2.1.1 provides that “Any person applying for a permit to
install a new or replacement on site wastewater treatment and disposal system shall first
obtain a site evaluation report prepared by a Class D soil scientist.” Class E is the
installer, Class F is the hauler, and Class H and Class I are the two inspection jobs. Every
one of them is examined — 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-4.5 has an applicant for any of these classes
“required to pass an examination prepared and administered by the Department” — and every one
of them attaches to a person rather than to the business: 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-4.16 provides
that “Licenses issued pursuant to this Section are not transferable and shall expire on
December 31st of each year.” A company doing design, soil evaluation, inspection and
pumping as well as installation holds several of these classes, each in a person’s name and
each expiring on the same date.
The license on the person and the permit for the system are two different instruments, and a
page that merges them is wrong about both. 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-3.31.1 forbids constructing
or replacing a system “unless such person has a valid permit issued by the Department” — that
permit belongs to one system on one lot and says nothing about the credential the installer
holds. The one genuinely local step in the sequence belongs to the permit and not to the
credential: 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-3.2 requires land-use approval before the department may
issue it. That is a zoning fact about the property, not a credential fact about the
contractor, and it is not a reason to go looking for a trade license at a local office.
Pumping is its own regime and it runs on two instruments rather than one. The hauler
holds a Class F liquid waste hauler license: 7 Del. C. § 6023(d) provides that “No person shall haul,
convey or transport any liquid waste in any container without a license issued by the
Department.”, and 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-4.1.6 sets out what the class authorizes — “The Class
F license authorizes the removal, transportation or disposal of the solid and liquid contents
of septic tanks, cesspools, grease traps, seepage pits, holding tanks, portable toilets or
other wastewater treatment or disposal facilities”. The pumping operation holds a Non-Hazardous
Liquid Waste Transporters Permit as well, and section 7101-5.3.32.1 of the same code, quoted
below, puts the license and the permit inside one prohibition. The license attaches to the person and the transporters
permit to the operation, and the coverage condition hangs off that permit.
That is the one place where Delaware writes a coverage condition itself, and it is worth
reading as exactly what it is. 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-5.3.32.3.13: “All transporters shall at
all times maintain commercial automobile liability insurance with a combined single limit of
at least $100,000, and shall submit a Certificate of Insurance demonstrating compliance with
this regulation.” A bond sits beside it, and a bond is not a policy: 7 DE Admin. Code
7101-5.3.32.4.3 provides that “The amount of the bond shall be at least $5,000.”, and the
licensee-side duty at 7101-4.12.6.1.1.3 reads “Operate under a $5,000 performance bond, or
other form of security, is maintained on file with the Department for the duration of
licensing.”, which is how the department published it.
Read the limit as a regulatory floor a
permit is issued against and as nothing else — not a recommendation, not an adequate limit for
a septic fleet, not a market norm. The rest of the exposure sits in duties that are unusually
operational for a licensing rule: pumping through anything but the proper access is
prohibited, the whole contents of every compartment have to come out, every pump-out carries a
visual inspection of the interior of the tank, holding-tank and grease-trap work runs on a
written maintenance contract filed with the department, septage and grease trap waste may not
be co-mingled without written approval, and 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-4.12.6.7 has it that “The
Class F licensee shall submit quarterly reports documenting the location, the 911 mailing
address, and amount of septage removed in total gallons.” Missing a quarterly septage report
is a licensing problem first and a claim, if ever, second, which is the kind of exposure no
policy fully answers.
Delaware licenses septic inspectors too, in two classes for two different jobs rather than two
routes to one credential. The Class H and Class I provisions, 7 DE Admin. Code 7101-4.1.7 and
7101-4.1.8, are set out in full below. Class H looks at a system that is already in the
ground; Class I signs off new work. Neither class is optional: inspecting is among the
activities 7 Del. C. § 6032(a) puts behind a license from the Secretary. The Class I route also carries an independence rule that matters more to
an insurance page than it looks: a Class I construction inspector must “Not inspect any system
which the licensee has installed as a Class E system contractor or any Class E system
contractor working within the same company as the Class I construction inspector.”
(7 DE Admin. Code 7101-4.11.4). So a Class I construction inspector may not inspect a system
installed by a Class E system contractor working within the same company. The Class I route requires a Class B or Class C license held
with experience behind it, so the construction inspector is a designer first, and the Class H
route qualifies on a training certification plus a written examination with the department
supervising a new licensee’s first inspections.
Underneath the trade credential sits a second one that is blind to the trade, and it carries a
workers compensation condition. 30 Del. C. § 2502(a): “Any person desiring to engage in
business in this State as a contractor shall obtain a license upon making application to the
Division of Revenue”. The definition it runs on does not name this trade at all; it reaches it
through “every other type of structure as an improvement, alteration or development of real
property”. What matters here is the condition on issue. The Division of Revenue may not issue
the license until the applicant “Has filed a certificate of insurance showing that such person
has insured liability in the amount and manner, and when due, and as required, under the
workers’ compensation laws of this State” — 30 Del. C. § 2502(b)(3), which also admits a
Department of Labor certificate of qualified self-insurance in its place. A Delaware
contractor license cannot be issued to an employer with no workers compensation answer. A bond
enters only for the nonresident: 30 Del. C. § 2502(b)(1) conditions issue on compliance with
30 Del. C. § 375, whose subsection (a)(1) reads “The amount of the surety bond to be required
of any nonresident contractor or subcontractor required to be licensed under Chapter 25 of
this title shall be as follows: 6% of the contract or subcontract price on all contracts of
$20,000 or more”. That is a tax-revenue bond payable to the State rather than a performance
bond for the customer, and § 375(a)(3) lets the Secretary of Finance waive it. None of this
stands in for the class license — it sits underneath it, and it would read the same on a
roofing or an electrical business.
The workers compensation duty itself attaches at the first employee, under 19 Del. C.
§ 2306(a), quoted in full below. It is discharged two ways and there is no third:
19 Del. C. § 2372(a), set out in full below, allows insurance or approved self-insurance and
nothing else. Delaware does run a fund under that name, but it reimburses rather than insures —
19 Del. C. § 2396(a) creates it “for the purpose of making payments under § 2327, § 2334, or
§ 2347 of this title by any insurance carrier.” — so it is not a route an employer here can
take. Owners and officers run in opposite directions, and both are written down: 19 Del. C.
§ 2308(b) provides that “Sole proprietors and partners are not included within this chapter,
but such sole proprietor or partner may elect coverage in accordance with § 2306 of this
title.”, while § 2308(a) puts executive officers inside the chapter unless the company and the
officer agree in writing to an exemption. Neither of those is a crew, and none of the chapter’s
other exceptions reaches one.
One more sentence on this subject belongs to the contractor who is not based here, and
Delaware writes it explicitly. 19 Del. C. § 2371(b): “Every employer having a primary place of
business in another state shall carry Delaware workers’ compensation coverage in full for any
employees doing substantial work in the State as if they were an employer in Delaware.” The
chapter then defines substantial work, and its first limb is “A construction or contracting
business for which a Delaware employer would be required to be licensed under Chapter 25 of
Title 30” — the same chapter the contractor license sits in. Subsection (d) states what that
coverage may consist of, including a written rider on an out-of-state policy, and subsection
(f) puts a verification duty on the Delaware business that hires the out-of-state one. An
out-of-state employer’s crew doing substantial work here carries the out-of-state employer
rule with it, and the Delaware business that hires it carries the verification duty.
Almost none of that is an insurance requirement: only the automobile liability insurance
condition on transporters and the workers’ compensation certificate of insurance behind the
contractor license are. Both are floors a license or permit is issued against, not answers to
what this trade can actually lose.
Everywhere else the
credential question and the coverage question are separate, and the sections below set out
each one with the authority it rests on, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
