Septic Contractor Insurance in Michigan

Michigan issues no state septic installer license, and no Michigan statute creates one. That is a finding rather than a gap: read as whole documents, Michigan’s Public Health Code and its Occupational Code produce no septic installer credential at any state level and no designer credential either. What a Michigan septic installer actually holds is issued by your local board of health, under the sanitary code in force where the work is done — and that body is not reliably a county government, because a Michigan health department may serve one city, one county, or a multi-county district. So the first question on a Michigan job is not which state board to call. It is which health department has jurisdiction over the site, and what that department’s own sanitary code asks of the people who work there.

Read that answer for how far it reaches, because it reaches less than the whole state, and the limit sits in the statute’s own verb. The credential is made one tier down, under a grant of power written as a permission. MCL 333.2435 is captioned “Local health department; additional powers.” and opens “Sec. 2435. A local health department may:” before listing, at paragraph (d), the power to “Adopt regulations to properly safeguard the public health and to prevent the spread of diseases and sources of contamination.” A department may use that power to license the installers working in its jurisdiction, and it may decline to. Whether an installer must hold anything therefore depends on the Michigan jurisdiction the work is in. Where a health department has used the power, the duty is real and it is written down — as one example only, from the Genesee County Health Department’s own published septic page, cited to that department and never as a rule about Michigan: “Installers must be licensed by the Genesee County Health Department to perform septic work in Genesee County.” The same department’s construction standard records where its authority comes from, stating that the standards are adopted “pursuant to authority conferred upon local health departments by the Public Health Code, and are incorporated by reference into the Regulations”. In a jurisdiction that has done that, a contractor without the credential may not do the work there. This page will not tell you that every Michigan septic installer must hold a license, because no Michigan text says so; and it will not tell you that Michigan asks nothing, because that is the worse error and it is false wherever it matters most.

Local authority here runs upward, which is the opposite of how a contractor who has worked in some other states will expect it to run. MCL 333.2441 provides that a local health department’s regulations “shall be at least as stringent as the standard established by state law applicable to the same or similar subject matter”, and that “Regulations of a local health department supersede inconsistent or conflicting local ordinances.” That is a floor, not a ceiling. MCL 333.12757(1) points the same way for innovative and alternative waste treatment systems, making their installation and use “subject to regulation by the local health department in accordance with the ordinances and regulations of the local units of government in which the structure lies”. And the floor sits low by construction, because on residential onsite sewage there is very little state standard for a local rule to be measured as stringent against. The practical consequence is the one to carry onto a job: the binding standard is the one in force where the shovel is, and it changes at the jurisdiction line rather than at the state line.

The document a Michigan reader is most often pointed at as though it were the state code is not one, and it says so about itself. The state’s design guidance for reviewing health departments defines its own status by reference to Michigan’s administrative procedures act as a statement of policy that “does not have the force or effect of law, and which binds the agency but does not bind any other person”, and adds that “Nothing in these criteria shall prevent local health departments or other government agencies from adopting and enforcing requirements more stringent than these criteria.” It constrains the department reviewing the plan, not the person who drew it. Its title page also names a state department that no longer exists under that name, so it cannot be read as the current position of any Michigan agency either. Set that beside the absence of any designer credential at any level and the shape of the exposure is visible: the design judgment and the installation judgment routinely sit on the same contractor, with a reviewing department and its own sanitary code as the only thing between them and the ground.

The near miss is a state registration for a different trade, named here so it is never read as the answer. MCL 333.12704 requires a certificate of registration as a well drilling contractor or a pump installer, issued annually by the state department. It is a genuine Michigan state credential, it sits in the same part of the Public Health Code the septic statutes sit near, its holders work the same rural sites as a septic crew — and it has nothing to do with sewage. Every place the word installer appears in Michigan’s Public Health Code, it is a pump installer. Michigan does register installers. It does not register septic installers, and the whole of the difference is one word.

Now the half of this business Michigan does license from the state, because the two halves sit at opposite levels and that asymmetry is the structural fact about working here. Pumping and hauling take a state credential — two of them, traveling together. MCL 324.11702(1) states it: “A person shall not engage in servicing or contract to engage in servicing except as authorized by a septage waste servicing license and a septage waste vehicle license issued by the department pursuant to part 13. A person shall not contract for another person to engage in servicing unless the person who is to perform the servicing has a septage waste servicing license and a septage waste vehicle license.” Read the second sentence twice, because it is the one that gets dropped. The prohibition runs against the person who contracts for another to service, not only against the person holding the hose, so a septic contractor who subcontracts a pump-out is inside that section. What counts as servicing is fixed in the statute rather than left to usage: “‘Service’ or ‘servicing’ means cleaning, removing, transporting, or disposing, by application to land or otherwise, of septage waste.” The pumping, the hauling and the land application are one credential and not three, and the site approvals for land application are conditions of the application itself.

The license is the state’s and the verification behind it is not. Once an application is complete the state sends the materials on, and MCL 324.11706(1) has it that “a certified health department shall conduct investigations necessary to verify that the sites, the servicing methods, and the septage waste vehicles are in compliance with this part.” A certified health department is defined at MCL 324.11701(b) as “a city, county, or district department of health certified under section 11716.” So the same counter that issues a contractor’s installer credential under its own sanitary code may also be the body that inspects that contractor’s trucks on the state’s behalf — one office, two entirely different legal authorities, and collapsing them is how an operator comes to believe one credential answers for both. The septage license also must be kept current, and MCL 324.11703(2) makes continuing education a condition of eligibility. And MCL 324.11711 bars surface application of septage waste to frozen ground outright, which closes that disposal route for part of the year. In this state that is an operating constraint with a season attached, and a season is something a policy year can outlive.

Michigan certifies no septic inspector and no septic evaluator at the state level. The registration that looks closest is not one: Part 184 of the Public Health Code registers sanitarians, and what the operative section forbids is the use of a name — “A person shall not use the titles ‘sanitarian’, ‘registered sanitarian’, ‘r.s.’, or similar words which indicate that he, she, or it is a registered sanitarian unless the person is registered under this article.” It reserves no act and it does not mention sewage, so a department that tells a caller to contact their area sanitarian is not describing a septic certification. Now the part that absence does not say. Nothing attaches at the state level to the person doing a septic inspection, and that is not a statement that no inspection happens. Two inspection duties attach in Michigan and neither is a state certification. The first is the permit inspection, performed by the health department’s own staff under its own sanitary code: in the worked example above the department inspects the tank and drainfield before backfilling, and an installer who backfills ahead of it has closed the ground over the only record that the work was compliant. The second is the evaluation some jurisdictions require when a property changes hands. As one example only, and cited to the Macomb County Health Department’s own published regulation rather than to Michigan: “If you are selling a property that is served by a septic system and/or a well water system, you are required to have the system(s) evaluated by an evaluator registered under this Regulation or by the Macomb County Health Department.” The same regulation adds that “It is required that the septic tank be pumped with the evaluator on site.” — and that pumping is servicing, which only a state septage waste servicing licensee may do. Where a registered evaluator does the work, one transfer evaluation therefore puts a locally registered evaluator and a state licensee on the same site under two different regimes. No state certificate, two real duties, and a written opinion on another contractor’s installation, given years after the work.

For workers compensation, MCL 418.115(a) and (b) set out who the act reaches, by two tests rather than one. Subdivision (a) reaches “All private employers, other than agricultural employers, who regularly employ 3 or more employees at 1 time.” Subdivision (b) reaches “All private employers, other than agricultural employers, who regularly employ less than 3 employees if at least 1 of them has been regularly employed by that same employer for 35 or more hours per week for 13 weeks or longer during the preceding 52 weeks”. Where the duty attaches, MCL 418.611(1) offers exactly two methods and neither is a state fund: self-insurance on the director’s authorization, or a policy with an insurer authorized to write the line in this state. Two or more employers in the same industry may also pool their liabilities as a group self-insurer on the director’s conditions, which is a third route and still a private one. Michigan’s state accident fund is gone — the statutory sections that carried it are repealed — so anything still describing one is describing something that ended.

The sharpest Michigan fact on this trade is not in the licensing law at all. MCL 418.171(1) provides that where a principal contracts with a contractor who is not subject to the act or who has not complied with MCL 418.611, “the principal shall be liable to pay to any person employed in the execution of the work any compensation under this act which he or she would have been liable to pay if that person had been immediately employed by the principal”. Subsection (2) gives the principal indemnity back against the contractor, and subsection (4) expressly permits the principal to “demand that the contractor enter into a written agreement with the principal agreeing to reimburse the principal for any loss incurred under this section”. From the other side, MCL 418.641(1) makes an employer’s failure to comply a misdemeanor with each day a separate offense, and MCL 418.641(2) strips the exclusive remedy: an employee of an employer that violates MCL 418.171 or MCL 418.611 “shall be entitled to recover damages from the employer in a civil action”. That is why a septic subcontractor in this state gets asked for a certificate before the first cut, and it is a statutory reason rather than a custom.

One thing worth saying plainly, because it is the place this trade most often hears a word that sounds like insurance and is not. The license condition recorded in the worked example above is a surety bond and a passing examination — not proof of insurance. A bond of that kind is a guarantee given to the department that issues the license; it answers to that department, and it is not coverage for the contractor’s own liability. It also has to stay in force for the license to stay good, which makes a lapse a credential problem and not only a paperwork one.

Two things this page does not tell you, because they were pursued and not established, and they are named here rather than left as silence. Whether Michigan’s state residential builder or maintenance and alteration contractor license reaches septic installation was pursued through the statute and through the licensing agency’s own materials, and it is not resolved: the statute fixes a closed list of crafts and trades that license covers, excavation is on that list and septic work is not, and no state source read for this page says whether a septic system is among the related facilities appurtenant to a dwelling inside that license. It is an open question and this page will not answer it in either direction. And there is no count here of how many Michigan jurisdictions license installers, or of how many local health departments the state has, because no state source read for this page states either figure. Everywhere else the credential question and the coverage question are separate questions, 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.