Georgia certifies septic installers itself. The certifying body is the Georgia Department of
Public Health: it certifies the septic tank installer statewide, on a written examination, and certification is the word
the state uses in its rule, in its Manual and on its own pages — the only thing that chapter
calls licensed is an engineer. The operative sentence names the soil classifier beside the
septic tank contractor, the inspection and maintenance personnel and the sewage pumper, and
says they “must be certified by the Department.” It carries no exemption on its face — no
threshold, no class of work carved out — so the duty reaches every individual performing
those services.
And the credential is two credentials. The certified individual has to own, or work for, a
septic tank company that holds its own separate certification, so a one-person Georgia outfit holds
the person’s certification and the company’s: two renewals, and two ways to lapse. The Manual
excuses two groups from that ownership-or-employment requirement — someone employed by a local
municipality or governmental entity doing this work under its own jurisdiction, and a
homeowner installing a conventional system “at their primary residence.” Read those for
exactly what they say. They excuse the attachment to a company. They do not excuse the
certification, and they do not excuse the permit, the inspection or the rules.
Permission to build a particular system is a different instrument, and it does not come from
the state. The construction permit comes from the county board of health for the site, and the
job is not finished when the tank is in the ground: nobody may backfill or use the system until
that same board has made a final inspection and issued its written approval. The counter where
you sit the certification examination is local as well, which is a large part of why this
credential gets mistaken for a county one. It is not — the certification is statewide, and the
approval for that hole in the ground is your county’s.
One Georgia finding belongs on an insurance page more than on any other kind. The state’s
on-site sewage rules do attach a proof-of-coverage condition to a credential, and it is not the
installer’s and not the pumper’s — it is the soil evaluation and the engineered design. The
soil classifier, engineer or geologist attaches a current liability certificate and then has to
keep it current, because Georgia makes that a continuing condition rather than a one-off filing.
The Department’s own words are “Insurance must be current and on file” — and the Manual
provides that losing it immediately revokes the approval to perform soil evaluations. Nothing of
the kind is asked of the person who digs the hole, which makes what a septic business carries a
commercial decision rather than a filing it makes to stay certified.
It is worth reading that alongside one more provision. Georgia lets the Department revoke or
deny a certification on a list of grounds, and some of those grounds are commercial events
rather than technical failures — among them a civil judgment arising out of on-site sewage
work. A loss and a certification proceeding can therefore be the same event, and the second one
reaches every job the company has open.
The sections below set out each finding beside the
authority it rests on, with a link to the source, so none of it has to be taken on our word.
