Oregon puts this trade’s credential in its environmental agency, and it asks for two of them.
The first belongs to the business. The Department of Environmental Quality issues a sewage
disposal service license, and the statute states its own effect as a prohibition rather than an
instruction, set out in full below: nobody may perform sewage disposal services, or even “purport
to be in the business”, without holding that license first. The rule says it again in its own words, and the installer type is named
in terms: “An installer license is required for any person to construct or install onsite systems
or parts of onsite systems”. Read the prohibition closely, because it reaches further than the
work: an unlicensed Oregon business may not hold itself out as doing this at all, even if it does
none. And the licensed unit is the business, not the trade — “A separate license is required for
each business, organization, or other person conducting sewage disposal services.” The second
credential belongs to a person. Whoever supervises installation holds a Department of
Environmental Quality installer certification, and the licensed business has to name one:
“Each business with an installer or installer/pumper license must identify at least one person
certified under OAR 340-071-0650 who will supervise installation of onsite systems for the
licensee.” These are two things a reader must have, never one of two routes. A certified
individual with no licensed employer may not hold the work out, and a licensed business with no
certified supervisor cannot complete its own application.
The certification duty does not reach everyone who puts a system in the ground, and the rule
names who it leaves out rather than leaving that to inference: “A person who supervises or is
responsible for constructing or installing onsite systems must be a certified installer unless
the person is the permittee for constructing or installing the system or the permittee’s regular
employee.” The permittee and the permittee’s regular employees are outside it — which, on a
residential job, is the owner building on their own lot under their own permit, together with the
people that owner regularly employs. The statute contemplates the same people on the permit limb,
where “a permit issued to an owner or contract purchaser carries the condition that the owner or
purchaser or regular employees or a person licensed under ORS 454.695 perform all labor in
connection with the construction of the subsurface or alternative sewage disposal system” — the
owner, the owner’s regular employees and a licensee stated as three alternatives, not as three
cumulative requirements. Two things follow, and the second is the one a page is likeliest to get
wrong. The first is that the carve-out does not reach the contractor who takes the job: a
business doing this work is not the permittee constructing or installing the system and is not
the permittee’s regular employee. The second is that the carve-out is written on the
certification and not on the license. Nothing in the chapter states an exemption from ORS
454.695(1) itself, and the alternative at ORS 454.655(2) is an alternative rather than an
exemption — so whether an owner-builder performs sewage disposal service within the meaning of
that prohibition is an edge this page does not decide in either direction.
Then the part a national template gets wrong. Oregon’s contractor regime does not stack on top of
the environmental agency’s license — it steps aside. ORS 701.010 is headed Exemptions from
licensure and subsection (8) reaches “A person licensed or registered in one of the following
trades or professions when operating within the scope of that license or registration”, and
(8)(d) is “A sewage disposal system installer licensed by the Department of Environmental
Quality.” The prohibition that exemption is measured against is ORS 701.021(1), under which “a
person or joint venture that undertakes, offers to undertake or submits a bid to do work as a
contractor must have a current license issued by the Construction Contractors Board and possess
an appropriate endorsement as provided in this section”. So an Oregon septic installer told to go
get a contractor license has been told something that is wrong about the ordinary case — and an
Oregon septic installer told they never need one has been told something that is wrong about the
boundary. The exemption runs only while the operator works within the scope of that license, and
the scope is drawn by the sewage disposal service definition, which does take the dirt work with
it: “Grading, excavating and earthmoving work connected with the operations described in
paragraph (a) of this subsection.” A crew whose week also includes site work, utility trenching
or a driveway is outside the exemption for that work. That is a coverage question before it is a
licensing one, because the contractor licensing statute writes an insurance condition into
itself — a licensed contractor “shall have in effect public liability, personal injury and
property damage insurance covering the work of the contractor that is subject to this chapter,
including the covering of liability for products and completed operations according to the terms
of the policy and subject to applicable policy exclusions”. The two regimes are not sealed off
from each other either: the sewage statute lets the agency suspend or revoke its own license
where “The licensee was licensed by the Construction Contractors Board at the time of licensing
under ORS 454.695 and the license issued by the board was revoked or suspended”.
The license and the permit come from different counters in part of the state, and merging them
misdirects a reader. Oregon runs its onsite program directly and through delegated counties at
the same time. The agency “may enter agreements with local governmental units authorizing those
units to become DEQ’s agents for permitting onsite systems”, and it “retains those
responsibilities for systems in nonagreement counties and for all systems that require WPCF
permits.” What the statute settles, it settles by enumeration: ORS 454.725(1) provides that “The
Department of Environmental Quality may enter into agreements with local units of government for
the local units to perform the duties of the department under ORS 454.635, 454.655, 454.665 and
454.755.” Four sections are delegable, and the licensing section is not among them. The body on
the other end of such an agreement is defined as an agent rather than as an independent
regulator — a contract agent “means a local unit of government that has entered into an agreement
with the Department of Environmental Quality pursuant to ORS 454.725”. So a county may issue the
permit for a system on a lot, and only the state issues the license that lets anyone do the work
at all, everywhere in the state including inside those counties. For an operator it means two
processes on two timetables, and on a claim it means two files rather than one.
Pumping sits in the same statute under a different license type, so there is no stand-alone
septage hauler credential here: the pumper license, whose text is set out below, reaches anyone
who pumps out or cleans onsite systems, portable toilets included, and disposes of the material
that comes out of them. The work is
inside the same defined term the licensing prohibition runs against — “The pumping out or
cleaning of subsurface sewage disposal systems, alternative sewage disposal systems or
nonwater-carried sewage disposal facilities.” A combined installer and pumper license exists for
the businesses that do both. And the truck carries paperwork of its own, because the rule attaches
a second instrument to a different object: applying means an inspection of the pumping equipment
by an agent, the licensee “must ensure that all pumping vehicles and equipment comply with the
following requirements”, and then “DEQ-issued labels for each current license period must be
displayed at all times at the front and rear and on each side of the vehicle.” Those labels go
back to the agency when a vehicle leaves the work, and a licensee whose license is suspended or
revoked surrenders it and certifies in writing that every label has come off the equipment. The
waste is governed too: spills cleaned up, disposal only at approved facilities, origin and
destination records carried during pumping, transport and disposal and kept on file for three
years, and the licensee “Must possess a current DEQ-approved septage management plan.”
Inspecting is where Oregon is most unusual, and where the duty on the person who evaluates an
existing system is narrowest. There is
no Oregon septic inspector license. What the rule fixes instead is a qualification with six
alternative doors, and it makes that qualification a prohibition; both sentences are set out
below. The words “required by this rule” in that prohibition are load-bearing, and they are the first of two scopes. A contractor who
looks at a customer’s tank outside an occasion the rule names is not conducting an evaluation the
rule requires, and the qualification list does not reach that visit. The first door is a
“Professional Engineer under ORS chapter 672 with knowledge and experience inspecting onsite
systems”. The second is a “Registered Environmental Health Specialist or Wastewater Specialist
under ORS chapter 700 with knowledge and experience inspecting onsite systems”. The third and
fourth are the certifications this trade already holds: “A certified installer with knowledge and
experience inspecting onsite systems” and “A certified maintenance provider with knowledge and
experience inspecting onsite systems”. The fifth is “A current NAWT inspector training and
certification accreditation with a sewage disposal service license”, a private national trade
association’s accreditation that the rule adopts by name and that qualifies nobody on its own,
since the rule requires it to be held together with a sewage disposal service license. The sixth
is “Other similar license or certification DEQ approves”, a residual approval for which nothing
read sets a standard, a term or a published list. The second scope is the class of system, and it is
the one most often overstated. The recurring duty reaches a named technology set and nothing
else: “A maintenance provider who inspects, maintains, or certifies or supervises maintenance on
onsite systems using alternative treatment technologies, recirculating gravel filters, sand
filters, or pressurized distribution systems must be certified as a maintenance provider.”
Alternative treatment technologies, recirculating gravel filters, sand filters and pressurized
distribution systems — a conventional tank and drainfield is outside it. Where the class does
apply, the owner’s side of it is a standing obligation: “Maintain a contract under this rule with
a maintenance provider certified as required in OAR 340-071-0650 to service and maintain the
onsite system.” and “Ensure the system is inspected at least annually by a certified maintenance
provider or the agent under OAR 340-071-0260.” The service contract has to be perpetual and
continuous until the system is decommissioned, and the provider has to notify the owner and the
agent in writing within 30 days of an improper function that cannot be fixed at the visit. A
perpetual contract carrying a written duty to notify a regulator leaves a professional exposure in
place long after the installation is finished.
The bond sits inside the credential rather than beside it, and its tail is the part that matters
to an insurance conversation. “An applicant for a license required by ORS 454.695 shall execute a
bond in favor of the State of Oregon.” It does not run only to the state: “Any person injured by
a failure of the applicant to comply with ORS 454.605 to 454.755 and with the rules of the
commission regarding sewage disposal services shall have a right of action on the bond in the
name of the person”, on a two-year written-claim window stated in the same subsection, and the
licensee has to give every customer written notice of the surety and of that right of action
before the work is finished. The rule sets the security “in the penal sum of $15,000 for each
installer or installer/pumper license or $5,000 for each pumper license”, with a cash or
negotiable-securities deposit allowed in its place. It has to come from a surety company licensed by Oregon’s insurance
regulator, the surety has to give the agency at least 45 days notice before canceling, and the
bond has to remain in effect for at least two years after the license terminates. Set that beside
the license term, which may not exceed three years following the issue date, and the certificate
the supervising person carries, which expires three years after it issues and recertifies on
continuing education: a bond that survives the license by two years and a customer right of
action with its own two-year window are two runoff exposures on a trade whose failures surface
late.
Workers compensation is compulsory for any employer of even one subject worker, with no headcount
floor, and the duty is written as a prohibition as well as an obligation; both provisions are
quoted below. Coverage is placed one of two ways, by qualifying “(a) As a carrier-insured employer; or
(b) As a self-insured employer as provided by ORS 656.407.” A state-created insurer competes
inside the first of those routes rather than owning it; the statute describes it as “created as an
independent public corporation” with a board the Governor appoints and the Senate confirms, and it
is a corporation that competes rather than a fund that excludes. The exceptions look like an exit
for owners and are not, for this trade. The statute opens “All workers are subject to this chapter
except those nonsubject workers described in the following subsections” and then sorts people by
role and by the nature of the work rather than by headcount — and the construction limb pulls
working owners back in. Partners are nonsubject only where they are “not engaged in work performed
in direct connection with the construction, alteration, repair, improvement, moving or demolition
of an improvement on real property or appurtenances thereto”, and members of multi-member limited
liability companies are reversed in terms: “while engaged in work performed in direct connection
with the construction, alteration, repair, improvement, moving or demolition of an improvement on
real property or appurtenances thereto, are subject workers”. Septic installation is construction
on real property. A multi-member company whose members swing shovels is not the exempt case it
looks like at first reading.
Almost none of that is an insurance requirement. Two clauses come close — the insurance condition
written into the contractor licensing statute, which reaches this trade only when it steps outside
the scope of its own license, and the bond behind the environmental agency’s license — and
everywhere else the credential question and the coverage question are separate questions with
separate answers. 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.
