Rhode Island licenses the person who installs an onsite wastewater treatment system, and it is
the person it licenses rather than the business. The prohibition is statutory at R.I. Gen. Laws
§ 5-56-1(a), and the department’s rule repeats that prohibition on the individual in its own
words, quoted in full on this page. The counter is the state — the license is issued by the director of environmental
management, under a chapter that makes the department itself the licensing authority — and there
is no town office that issues it. It is examined rather than registered: § 5-56-2(c) requires a
passing grade on a written examination intended to demonstrate the applicant’s understanding of
the rules and the ability to read and interpret approved plans, and § 5-56-2(d) requires a
demonstration of possession of and the ability to properly use a level or transit. It is
personal: “The license shall be issued to natural persons only and is not transferable or
assignable.” And it runs for a term rather than a season — § 5-56-6(a) provides that
“Licenses shall be in effect for a period not to exceed three (3) years following the date of
issuance.”
That duty does not reach every operator, and the licensing section writes its own exception into
its second subsection. § 5-56-1(b): “This section does not apply to a property owner installing,
constructing, altering, or repairing an individual sewage disposal system to serve a building he
or she occupies or will occupy as his or her intended permanent domicile; provided, that he or
she has obtained written permission for that work, and that he or she has obtained the necessary
written approval of the director of the plans and specifications for that work prior to the
start of any construction.” Read the proviso, because the exception is twice conditional and the
proviso is the half that gets dropped: it takes written permission for the work AND the
director’s prior written approval of the plans and specifications before any construction
starts. An owner who begins without both is outside the exception, not inside it. And the
exception belongs to the owner, not to a contractor — it reaches a property owner working on the
building they occupy or will occupy as a permanent domicile, and nothing in it lets an
unlicensed person install a system for somebody else. So the duty is scoped by one
owner-occupier exception, conditioned on two prior approvals, and nothing wider.
Installing is one of several licensed judgments on the same job, and the state issues a separate
license for each. Design is its own chapter: § 5-56.1-2 provides that “all plans, applications,
evaluations, and certifications for the siting, location, design, installation, or repair of any
individual sewage disposal system submitted to the department of environmental management shall
be prepared by a person possessing an appropriate designer’s license issued by the director of
the department of environmental management”. The rule then sets four classes. Class I authorizes
the design of a repair and Class II adds alterations and smaller new construction, while
“A Class III license authorizes the design of any OWTS provided for under these Rules.” Soil
evaluation is its own class again — “A Class IV license authorizes the performance of soil
evaluations described in § 6.16 of this Part.” — and it sits upstream of the installer, because
a soil evaluation is a precondition of most applications. The two credentials touch at exactly
one point: a licensed installer is the minimum qualification to sit the Class I examination.
Beside all of them, and easy to mistake for them, is the per-lot approval the same rule requires
before any work starts. That one is a different instrument written on a different subject — the
licensing prohibitions are written on an “individual” and the approval prohibition on any
“person”, which the rule defines to mean “any individual, group of individuals, firm,
corporation, association, partnership or any Federal, State or municipal governmental entity.”
The license sits on a human being; the approval reaches the business too.
Pumping and hauling is a different credential again, and it attaches the other way round. The
statute is written on the business: § 23-19.4-1(a), set out in full in the pumper section of
this page, opens on “No person, firm, corporation, partnership, or association” and requires a
license for the business of pumping, cleaning and transporting septage. What the department issues is a septage transporter permit, and a decal is issued
for each transportation unit that passes inspection rather than one for the fleet. The permit is
administered inside the state’s hazardous waste rules, which is a filing location and not a
classification — the same part keeps the two subjects apart, defining a transporter as “any
person that transports hazardous waste other than on-site or that transports septage”, and
nothing in it makes septage hazardous waste. The duties that follow the permit are operational
and they are documentary at the same time: “Transporters hauling septage shall maintain records
indicating the source and estimated volume of septage picked up, the date of shipment, and the
receiving Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW).”, the transporter must report accidental
discharges and spills immediately to the department, and it must collect what is accidentally
discharged from the vehicle. The state also writes a liability figure into this permit:
250-RICR-140-10-1 § 1.8.3(C) provides that “transporters engaged exclusively in the
transportation of septage need maintain liability insurance only sufficient to provide coverage
of $300,000.00 (three hundred thousand dollars) per incident.”, against a higher figure, and a
hazardous-materials rider, for a transporter that also moves hazardous waste or used oil. The
word exclusively is the whole condition: a hauler that moves anything else the part reaches is
outside the lower figure.
That figure is a regulatory floor a permit is checked against — not an adequate limit and not a
market norm.
Inspection is where the state writes a role and issues no inspector license itself. Rhode Island does not
license septic inspectors, and that is a finding rather than a gap: the licensing sections of the
same rule create four designer classes and an installer license and no inspector license, and
the program that keeps the inspector registry states the negative itself. What the statute does
create is a role. A system inspector “means a person who is registered as an inspector and
capable of properly assessing the condition of an OWTS.”, and that role is compulsory in a narrow
band rather than for inspections generally. At a property transfer where the manner of wastewater
disposal is unknown, § 23-19.15-12(b) provides that “This inspection shall be done by a system
inspector prior to the time of sale or transfer.” § 23-19.15-5(a) adds a standing duty in the
coastal and drinking-water zones, where an owner “shall cause an inspection to be performed on
said cesspool by a system inspector in accordance with a schedule established by the
department”. Outside those two bands the state’s own instruments forbid nobody from looking at a
system, and it is a town ordinance that supplies any further requirement. How a person qualifies is written only in the rule’s definition, and it is two routes
rather than one: the definition describes a system inspector on a department-approved list
“with the minimum qualifications of holding a Class I, II, or III Designers License or being a
Registered System Inspector with the New England Onsite Wastewater Training Center.” The first
route is a state license issued for another purpose; the second is registration with a training
program at the state university, which the department neither issues nor examines but does adopt
by reference and publish. Some towns then run their own approval of inspectors under their
inspection ordinances, and that town approval is what decides who actually inspects where a program runs.
The credential and the insurance condition touch at the contractor registration, and this trade
is exempt from all of it except the insurance section. A trade-blind contractor registration exists in this
state, and this trade is exempt from it: § 5-65-2(a)(10) names the chapter that licenses septic
installers among the state-licensed trades and provides that such a person or business entity
“shall be exempt from all the provisions of this chapter except” the insurance section. So the
registration does not reach a licensed installer working within the purview of the license — and
the insurance condition does, because it is the one provision the exemption keeps. § 5-65-7(a)
states the amount: “Throughout the period of registration, the contractor shall have in effect
public liability and property damage insurance covering the work of that contractor that shall be
subject to this chapter in not less than the following amount: five hundred thousand dollars
($500,000) combined single limit, bodily injury and property damage.” § 5-65-7(b) adds that
“In addition, all contractors shall have in effect workers’ compensation insurance as required
under chapter 29 of title 28.” And § 5-65-2(a)(10) makes the certificate the licensing agency’s
business rather than a file in your office: “A valid certificate of insurance shall be required
to be maintained by the licensing agency during the terms of the issuance date of the license as
a condition for a valid license. Failure of the licensee to maintain this insurance shall result
in loss of license pursuant to requirements of statutes governing the licensing authority.” No
surety bond conditions any of this. The security this state asks of this trade is insurance, and
a lapse is a license problem before it is ever a claims problem.
Workers compensation is a separate duty, it is compulsory, and it is bought in the open market.
Rhode Island states no head count: § 28-29-6, whose words are set out in full in the workers
compensation section of this page, turns on an employer who regularly employs people, and the
operative words are regularly employs rather than a number — no section of the chapter converts
them into one. § 28-36-1(a) then gives four lawful routes and no fifth, the first being
insurance in the words quoted in that same section, with approved self-insurance on
proof of financial ability, a combination of the two, and membership in an authorized group
self-insurance fund as the others. There is no state fund among them; the chapter that once
created one is published as repealed. Owners are treated apart from crews — a sole proprietor, a
partner and a limited liability company member sit outside the definition of employee unless they
have entered employment within the entity, and a corporate officer who was an employee first
stays one until a waiver is filed — but none of those exceptions reaches a crew.
Two of the facts above are insurance requirements and the rest are not, which is why they are
worth keeping apart. The local layer is a case in point: local ordinances can be stricter on
standards and a municipal review step exists under § 6.18(C), but that is a different fact from
who licenses: the state still issues both the installer and the designer credentials.
The sections below set out each requirement with the authority it rests on, so you can check it rather than
take our word for it.
