Illinois licenses this trade itself. The Illinois Department of Public Health issues a
statewide license for the installing contractor, under the Private Sewage Disposal Licensing
Act, on a passed written examination — and the Act writes the duty onto the person doing the
work rather than leaving it to guidance. 225 ILCS 225/4(a): “Any person who constructs,
installs, repairs, modifies, or maintains a private sewage disposal system, other than a system
which serves his own single family residence, shall be licensed by the Department as a Private
Sewage System Installation Contractor”. That is the credential, and it is the whole of what the
credential is. It is not the approval for the particular system you are about to put in the ground. 77 Ill. Adm. Code
905.190(a) calls for plan approval before construction begins “from the Department or local
authority”, on forms provided by “the Department or local authority”, and 225 ILCS 225/9 is the
provision that creates that second counter: the Department “may designate and use full-time
municipal, district, county or multiple county health departments as its agents”. So the
license is the state’s, and the approval for the job in front of you may be a local health
department’s. Given only one of those two, a contractor plans the work around the wrong
counter.
Read the statute’s sentence for what it actually does, because that is where the force of the
license lives. The Act says the person doing the work “shall be licensed by the Department”,
and the private sewage code then requires the licensed contractor to be present at the site
while the work is done. Under 77 Ill. Adm. Code
905.20(r) the licensed installation contractor has to be present at the site while the
construction, installation, repair, modification or maintenance is done, and 905.20(s) lets an
unlicensed individual dig only under his direct supervision. The license is held by a person,
and the person has to be there, so one licensed contractor cannot be present on a second
crew’s job at the same time.
For an owner running more than one truck that is the operative fact about the whole licensing
scheme, and it is the one that shows up in a scheduling argument long before it shows up in a
claim.
The duty is scoped twice — by a class of person in the Act, and by a local option that can
displace the state license. The first is a class of
person, and the Act draws that boundary itself in the same subsection: “A person who owns and
occupies a single family dwelling and who constructs, installs, maintains, services or cleans
the private sewage disposal system which serves his single family residence shall not be
required to be licensed under this Act, however, such person shall comply with all other
provisions of this Act and the private sewage disposal code promulgated hereunder by the
Department.” Every clause of that is doing work. It is the owner, occupying, of a single family
dwelling, on the system that serves his own residence — and even then only the licensing
requirement falls away, because the sentence keeps him inside every other provision of the Act
and the code. A landlord is not within it. Neither is a builder, a flipper, or a friend with a
backhoe. The carve-out is narrow, and it does not reach the operator who works on a
system other than his own residence, which is the operator this page is written for.
The second limb is not about a person at all. It is about a place, and it is the one provision
that could change the answer for a particular jurisdiction. 225 ILCS 225/10(a) preserves a unit
of local government’s ordinance for the regulation and inspection of private sewage disposal
contractors “provided such ordinance establishes a system at least equal to state regulation
and inspection”, and then says what follows from that approval: “If such plan is approved by
the Department the ordinance shall prevail in lieu of the state licensure, fee and inspection
program”. That is a real route by which the state licensing program can be displaced inside
one jurisdiction’s boundaries. Two sentences this page will not write about it. It will not say
that the license is displaced somewhere, because no approved local program was found and a
named one would be an inference wearing the clothes of a finding. And it will not say the
state license runs everywhere untouched, because an ordinance approved by the Department shall
prevail in lieu of the state licensure program. Ask the local authority for your job whether it runs an approved program of its
own. That is a question with an answer, and it costs a phone call rather than a rebuild.
The local counter also sets the timing: plan approval before construction begins, and notice
to the Department or local authority before work starts. 77 Ill. Adm. Code 905.190(a) puts the plan approval before construction
begins; 905.190(d) puts notice to the Department or local authority at least 48 hours before
work starts; and where the work went ahead without either, 905.190(e) obliges the owner or the
installation contractor to uncover any portion already backfilled. Read that last one twice. That
uncover-and-re-expose obligation is rework triggered by paperwork rather than by workmanship,
and the system may have been perfectly built. Local agencies in Illinois review private sewage plans either under an ordinance of
their own or as the Department’s designated agent, so the question of who approves a given job
is a question about that jurisdiction and never a question about the state.
Pumping and hauling is a second state license rather than an endorsement on the first, and the
fact that one agency issues both is the easiest thing here to get wrong. 225 ILCS 225/4(a)
creates it in the same subsection as the installer duty: “any person who cleans or pumps waste
from a private sewage disposal system, other than a system which serves his own single family
residence, or hauls or disposes of wastes removed therefrom shall be licensed by the Department
as a Private Sewage Disposal System Pumping Contractor”. The rule states it again from the
operating side — “Cleaning, pumping, disposing and hauling of waste from a private sewage
disposal system shall be done by a licensed Private Sewage Disposal System Pumping
Contractor.” — and 77 Ill. Adm. Code 905.180(b)(3) has the person who wants both pass both
examinations. An outfit that installs and pumps is therefore carrying two credentials, two
renewal clocks and two ways to be suspended on one operation. A third class sits beside them
and its verbs are broader than pumping: 905.135(a) reaches “Any person operating in Illinois
who sells, rents, leases, transports, services, cleans, sanitizes or maintains a portable
toilet or portable potable hand washing unit or pumps, transports or disposes of waste from
portable toilets or portable potable hand washing units”, which brings a pure rental operation
inside a portable sanitation license before anyone has pumped anything — and under
225 ILCS 225/5b(a-5) each technician who services those units holds a certificate of his own.
What the pumping license carries afterwards is a set of continuing operating conditions:
905.170(b) has the business name, the town of company origin and the telephone number painted
on each side of every pumper truck in letters at least 8 inches high in contrasting colors;
905.170(d) sets the tank, pump and discharge-nozzle condition of the collection vehicle;
905.170(e) has the contractor notify the Department and the local authority annually of the
disposal sites used, identified by county, township, range and section and by the owner’s name
and address; and 905.170(a) runs the whole of it in accordance with that Section and with
40 CFR 503. Those conditions attach to each pumper truck and to each disposal site, not to
a single job.
There is no Illinois septic inspector certification to hold. That absence is the finding on this
page most easily read backwards, so it is worth being exact about what it does and does not mean: the
state regulates the evaluation rather than the evaluator, and the evaluation is compulsory.
77 Ill. Adm. Code 905.20(q)(3)(A)(i) fixes who is allowed to carry one out on a residential
septic tank, and the list it gives is closed — “The system may be evaluated by the homeowner, a Private Sewage
Disposal System Installation Contractor, a licensed Environmental Health Practitioner, an
Illinois licensed Professional Engineer, a representative of the Department, or an agent of the
Department or local health department.” Strike the homeowner and the two public routes off that
list and what is left is credentialed work — the installation contractor, the environmental
health practitioner and the professional engineer each already hold an Illinois license. (A)(ii)
repeats the list for non-residential property with the homeowner struck out of it. The cycle is in the rule as well. A residential septic tank is
evaluated before or within 3 years of installation and at minimum every 5 years after the
first; a non-residential system within 3 years of installation and at minimum every 3 years
after; an aerobic treatment unit at least once every 6 months under (q)(3)(B); and sand filters
and waste stabilization ponds with surface discharges at minimum once a year under (q)(3)(C).
What the evaluation measures is stated too — whether scum and settled solids exceed 33% of the
tank’s liquid capacity, above which the tank is pumped out and maintenance performed. And
905.20(q)(4) closes the loop: failing to operate, maintain and service the system is itself a
violation of the Act and the code. So the duty is real, it is continuous, and it sits on the
system and on the credential-holder who evaluates it rather than on an inspector license this
state never created. For a contractor that cuts both ways — his own installer license is what
qualifies him to perform a statutory evaluation on somebody else’s system, which is recurring
service work and a professional exposure at the same time.
Workers compensation is the Illinois answer that depends on none of the above, and it applies
automatically, without election, to every employer in an extra hazardous enterprise. 820 ILCS 305/3 opens by having the Act “shall apply automatically
and without election to the State, county, city, town, township” and onward, and it then sets
out the trades it treats as extra hazardous. Second on that list: “Construction, excavating or
electrical work.” A septic crew falls inside the Act because of the work it does, not anything its
employer files, and construction and excavating carry no threshold at all. Illinois does carry
a payroll threshold, but it sits at item 17(a) of that same list, for businesses selling goods
or rendering services to the public at large: true about a shop, and not about this trade.
Having the liability, an employer has to secure it, and 820 ILCS 305/4(a) sets out four routes —
approval as a self-insurer at (a)(1); security, indemnity or bond where the Commission is not
satisfied of financial ability at (a)(2); insurance at (a)(3); or some other provision
satisfactory to the Commission at (a)(4). Not one of them is a state fund, because Illinois runs
no such fund. The ordinary route reads: “Insure his entire liability to pay such compensation in
some insurance carrier authorized, licensed, or permitted to do such insurance business in this
State.” The same paragraph has the policy cover all of the employees and the entire compensation
liability, admits two or more insurers only where the entire liability of the employees working
at or from one location sits with one of them or is self-insured, and voids outright any
provision that would limit or modify that liability. One further Illinois rule is worth a
construction page and is not in the obvious place: under 820 ILCS 305/4(a-1) an employer engaged
primarily in the building and construction industry, to which (a)(3) applies or which is in a
group self-insurance plan, makes its payments based upon the premium rates of the situs where
the work or project is located in Illinois, regardless of its state of domicile or principal
place of business. Whether a given septic business is engaged primarily in that industry is a
factual question about that business, and this page decides it for nobody.
The exceptions Illinois does run reach the owner personally and never the crew. 820 ILCS
305/3(20) provides that “Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to apply to any sole
proprietor or partner or member of a limited liability company who elects not to provide and pay
compensation” for accidental injuries sustained by himself, and 305/3(17)(b) lets a bona fide
President, Vice President, Secretary or Treasurer of a corporation withdraw himself as an
individual, effective when the insurance carrier receives written notice, and elect back in the
same way. Both are self-exclusions by a principal. Neither takes an employee out of the Act, and
neither makes coverage optional for a firm that employs anybody. What failure looks like is set
out at 820 ILCS 305/4(d): a Commissioner who determines after a hearing that an employer
knowingly failed to provide coverage may treat that failure as an immediate serious danger to
public health, safety and welfare, and a work-stop order may be issued and posted at the
employer’s places of employment and job sites, with law enforcement available to keep employees
off the site until proof of insurance lifts it. A knowing failure is a Class 4 felony and a
negligent one a Class A misdemeanor, and each day’s violation is a separate offense.
One last pair of Illinois findings explains why the license and the compensation duty never
meet. The
Private Sewage Disposal Licensing Act attaches no insurance condition and no bond to this
license — a read finding rather than an absence of notice, because the researcher swept all
twenty-five published sections of the Act and seven sections of the private sewage code for
insurance, bond, liability and surety terms and found two hits, neither of them a
financial-responsibility condition. The denominator belongs with the finding: those seven
sections are not the whole of the code, so what can honestly be said is that the state installer
license carries no proof-of-coverage condition, and not that no Illinois requirement anywhere reaches a
contractor’s insurance. That negative then does a second job. 820 ILCS 305/4(a-3) imposes a
penalty on a business “engaged in activities requiring licensure by a State agency, for which
proof that it has insured its workers’ compensation liability is a requirement for licensure”
which fails a requirement of subsection (a) — and read quickly, that looks written for a
state-licensed septic contractor. It is not. The provision engages only where the licensing
statute itself demands proof of coverage, and this one demands nothing of the kind. So the
compensation duty here comes from the nature of the work and not from the license: letting the
coverage go does not cost the license, and holding the license buys nothing on the compensation
side. The sections below set out each authority with a link to it, so you can check all of this
rather than take our word for it.
