Idaho licenses the septic installer, by that name, and splits the credential in two. The
mandate is a state administrative rule, IDAPA 58.01.03, written in one sentence that puts every
installer and service provider under a registration permit from the Director. Which of the two you need is decided by what you build. “A basic system installer’s permit is
required to install all individual systems not listed under Subsection 006.01.b.” The second
class reaches the engineered and mechanical work — “A complex system installer’s permit is
required to install evapotranspiration systems, ETPSs, lagoon systems, LSASs, pressure
distribution systems, PWTP systems, intermittent sand filters, sand mounds, or other
alternative systems specified in the TGM.” That split is a revenue fact before it is a
compliance one: a contractor who holds only the basic permit is not lawfully able to install
the alternative systems a hard site forces, and a hard site is not something you get to
decline after the soil report comes back. Both classes are earned the same way. IDAPA
58.01.03.006.02 provides that “The initial issuance of the installer’s or service provider’s
permit will be based on completing an examination, with a passing score of seventy percent
(70%) or more”, the permit expires at the start of each year, and a refresher course approved
by the department comes round every three years.
The state writes that rule and does not take the application, and a contractor who goes
looking for a state counter will not find one. Idaho’s environmental agency states the
arrangement in its own words: “Idaho’s seven public health districts administer these rules
under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with DEQ.” Those districts “conduct site
evaluations, issue septic system permits, inspect installations, and assist with
property-specific questions about permitting, existing systems, and permit records.” So the
credential is a state credential issued by your public health district — the district health
department with jurisdiction over the county where the work is performed. A district is an
office rather than a place: each one is built out of named counties, it covers between four
and eight of them, and the way you find yours is by the county the job sits in. It is also its
own body and not an arm of the state, which Section 39-414(12), Idaho Code, says in terms
when it provides that “a public health district is not a subdivision of the state” — while
the rule that creates the credential names the issuer as the Director, a term Section
39-103(7), Idaho Code, defines as “the director of the department of environmental quality or
the director’s designee.” What all of that adds up to for a working contractor is short. One
permit, taken out at the district that serves your county, is good across Idaho: “All
installers within the State of Idaho must obtain either a basic or complex installer’s
registration permit.” You do not need one in each district, and the counties whose work you
take do not multiply it.
The duty does not reach every installer, and the rule’s own exemption subsection names two
cases it leaves out. Its exemption subsection opens “An
installer’s permit is not required for:” and then names two cases. The first is a class of
contractor: a licensed public works contractor building a central or municipal system,
experienced in that type of system and working under the direction of a professional engineer
licensed in Idaho. The second is a class of person and of system, and every word of it is a
limit — “Owners installing their own standard or basic alternative system as described in the
TGM.” It is the owner. It is their own system. And it stops at the standard and basic
alternative classes, so it does not reach the complex list at all. It is not an exemption a
contractor can stand in, and an owner who hires help has stepped outside it. The permitting
agency puts the same shape in plain words on its own septic page: “In Idaho, all septic
systems must be installed by a licensed basic or complex installer (unless a homeowner
establishes a standard/basic system on their property with no hired help).” Two named
operators sit outside the installer permit. Every other installer must secure the registration
permit.
The permit is conditioned on a bond, and the bond is a surety bond rather than liability
cover — the one distinction on this page that is most easily blurred and most expensive to
get backwards. IDAPA 58.01.03.006.05.b sizes it by class: the bond must “Be in the sum of ten
thousand dollars ($10,000) for a basic installer’s or service provider’s permit, or thirty
thousand dollars ($30,000) for a complex installer’s permit;”. What it guarantees is the
permit holder’s faithful performance, and the rule then hands the damaged customer a direct
route to it: “Any person who suffers damage from negligent or wrongful acts of the installer
or service provider or by the installer’s or service provider’s failure to competently
perform any of the work agreed to be done under the terms of the registration permit will, in
addition to other legal remedies, have a right of action on the bond”. Read what that
actually does. A surety bond is a third-party guarantee that the principal makes good; where
it pays, it pays your customer and then looks to you for the money. It is not insurance for
the contractor, and it leaves your own liability exposure exactly where it was — which is why
a contractor who has satisfied the bond condition has answered the state and answered nothing
else.
A second Idaho credential sits beside the first, and it is not a septic credential at all.
Idaho registers contractors generally, under the Idaho Contractor Registration Act at Title
54, Chapter 52, Idaho Code, and that statute is where the blunt word appears: “On and after
January 1, 2006, it shall be unlawful for any person to engage in the business of, or hold
himself out as, a contractor within this state without being registered as required in this
chapter.” It is trade-blind — it reaches contractors rather than septic contractors — and it
is administered by the Idaho Contractors Board rather than by any health district. Its
conditions are the ones this trade is usually asked about. Section 54-5210(1)(e), Idaho Code,
requires the application to carry proof that the applicant has in effect “a general liability
policy, including products and completed operations insurance covering the applicant’s
construction operations in the sum of not less than three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000)
single limit.”, and Section 54-5210(1)(d) requires proof of workers’ compensation coverage or
a written statement of why that coverage is not required. Notice which words the legislature
chose. Products and completed operations is the limb that answers for a finished system long
after the crew has gone, and a septic system is precisely the kind of work that keeps
producing that exposure.
Now the fence, which matters more here than the figure does. Those
are conditions of contractor registration. They are not conditions of the installer’s
registration permit — that one is secured by a surety bond, which is not insurance at all —
and nothing here should be read as saying an Idaho septic
contractor must hold both: Section 54-5205(1), Idaho Code, opens with a wide carve-out for a
person “licensed, registered, or otherwise regulated by the state of Idaho” practicing what
they are regulated for, and whether that carve-out reaches an installer holding a registration
permit is a live question the chapter does not answer in terms. State each credential on its
own terms, and ask the body that issues it.
Two further permits live in the same rule chapter, and a contractor who does the work should
know which one they are holding. Pumping is its own instrument: the rule requires whoever
operates septic tank pumping equipment to hold a permit from the Director and to renew it
annually, and its words are set out below. It is one permit
for the business and not a permit per truck, and the fleet is marked rather than separately
licensed: “For each permit issued, a number is assigned to the owner or operator of the tank
truck or trucks that must be displayed at all times on the door of the vehicle or vehicles in
a legible manner.” Inspection in Idaho takes three sentences together, because the first
alone would leave a reader believing nothing is inspected. Idaho certifies no
septic inspector and requires no inspection when a property is sold. It does require a
certified service provider — a service provider permit alongside the two installer classes —
for the annual operation, maintenance and monitoring of an extended treatment package system,
under a rule quoted below. And the inspection every new system does get is the regulator’s
rather than a private one, and the rule that puts that final installation inspection on the
critical path is quoted below. For a contractor that final installation inspection is a
scheduling risk as much as a legal step, because a trench that has to stay open until the
inspector arrives is an exposure for every hour it waits.
Workers’ compensation is the one requirement on this page that is not a credential, and Idaho
begins it at no particular size of crew. Section 72-301(1), Idaho Code, puts that duty on every
employer, in words set out below, and gives two ways to meet it — insuring with an insurer the state authorizes to write it, or
self-insuring on the approval of the state’s industrial commission with security deposited
with the state treasurer. There is no minimum number of employees in it. What Idaho has
instead is a list of exempt employments, which opens “None of the provisions of this law
shall apply to the following employments unless coverage thereof is elected as provided in
section 72-213” and then names eleven, among them the sole proprietor, the working partner,
the working member of a limited liability company and the corporate officer who meets both
the ownership and the director tests. That is an election in and not an election out: an
owner or working partner is outside the system until they choose otherwise, and nothing lets
an employer put a covered worker outside it. Section 72-319(1) sets the price of getting it
wrong — “Any employer required to secure the payment of compensation under this law who fails
to secure the payment thereof shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” — and adds individual
liability for a responsible officer, a daily civil penalty, and an injunction that can stop
the business while the default continues.
The two places Idaho does speak about money
behind the work — a surety bond on the installer permit, and the liability insurance
conditions of contractor registration — belong to different instruments, and neither is
insurance for the contractor’s own liability exposure.
The sections below set out each credential with the authority it rests on, so you can check
it rather than take our word for it.
