Septic licensing coverage, state by state

Published here

The state licenses septic contractors centrally and publishes the records in a form we can republish, with a citation on every listing.

• Georgia

  2,069 licensed businesses across 157 counties, from Georgia DPH.

• Virginia

  440 licensed businesses across 94 counties, from Virginia DPOR.

• Florida

  609 licensed businesses across 63 counties, from Florida DEP.

• North Carolina

  4,425 licensed businesses across 100 counties, from NC OWCICB.

• Alabama

  1,046 licensed businesses across 67 counties, from Alabama AOWB.

• Delaware

  217 licensed businesses across 3 counties, from Delaware DNREC.

• Missouri

  1,483 licensed businesses across 113 counties, from Missouri DHSS.

• Oklahoma

  264 licensed businesses across 58 counties, from Oklahoma DEQ.

• Rhode Island

  235 licensed businesses across 5 counties, from RIDEM.

  Partial: RIDEM publishes a list for designers and soil evaluators but not for installers, so this is the half of the trade you need before the digging, not the people who do it.

Licensed centrally, but we cannot republish it

The state holds exactly the right data. Something about how it is published stops a scheduled job from reading it — so use the state's own lookup, linked below.

Licensed in one of these? Add your business free — with your licence number, so homeowners can check it against the state themselves.

• Minnesota

  MPCA licenses subsurface sewage treatment system businesses and publishes a search, but the underlying API is behind bot protection. We will not build a workaround into a scheduled job.

  Licensed by: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Check a licence yourself →

• Texas

  TCEQ licenses OSSF installers and publishes a lookup, but it answers one company name or licence number at a time with no listing to page through. Harvesting it would mean brute-forcing a state server.

  Licensed by: Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Check a licence yourself →

• New Hampshire

  NHDES publishes exactly the right thing — current lists of licensed septic designers and installers — but des.nh.gov refuses anything that is not a browser, so a scheduled job cannot depend on it. The lists open fine if you click through yourself.

  Licensed by: New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. Check a licence yourself →

• Arkansas

  Arkansas licenses onsite wastewater professionals statewide with no county layer, which would make it a good fit, but the department's site blocks non-browser clients.

  Licensed by: Arkansas Department of Health. Check a licence yourself →

• Oregon

  DEQ licenses sewage disposal service businesses statewide and publishes a search by name, licence, city or county — but it is served through an ASP.NET report viewer that needs session state to page through. Workable by hand, too brittle for a scheduled job. Worth revisiting.

  Licensed by: Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Check a licence yourself →

• Wisconsin

  DSPS licenses POWTS installers, inspectors and maintainers statewide, but sells the credential lists rather than publishing them. This site is built only from free public records, so buying the list would break the thing that makes it worth trusting.

  Licensed by: Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services. Check a licence yourself →

• Mississippi

  MSDH certifies installers, pumpers and maintenance providers statewide and publishes a search — but the search is a form-state application that will not answer a plain request, so it has to be used by hand.

  Licensed by: Mississippi State Department of Health. Check a licence yourself →

• South Carolina

  SCDES licenses septic installers and pumper/haulers statewide through its onsite wastewater application, but does not publish a downloadable roster.

  Licensed by: South Carolina Department of Environmental Services. Check a licence yourself →

• Maine

  Maine licenses site evaluators, system installers and inspectors, and the lists circulate — but as PDFs republished by individual towns rather than a current file the state publishes itself.

  Licensed by: Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Check a licence yourself →

No statewide licence to publish

Licensing happens at county, district or municipal level. There is no statewide roster because there is no statewide licence — there are dozens or hundreds of local ones.

Licensed in one of these? Add your business free — with your licence number, so homeowners can check it against the state themselves.

• Colorado

  Colorado sets a state minimum and each local public health agency licenses its own systems contractors. There are 64 counties and no statewide list — Eagle, Clear Creek and Summit each run their own register.

  Licensed by: county public health agencies, under CDPHE Regulation 43. Check a licence yourself →

• Pennsylvania

  Pennsylvania has no state licence for septic installers at all. Permits come from your municipality's Sewage Enforcement Officer — township, borough or city, not usually the county — and DEP certifies the officers rather than the contractors.

  Licensed by: municipal Sewage Enforcement Officers, certified by PA DEP. Check a licence yourself →

• Ohio

  Ohio law puts registration of installers, service providers and septage haulers with local boards of health. There are well over a hundred of them, each publishing separately.

  Licensed by: local boards of health. Check a licence yourself →

• Maryland

  Maryland licenses sanitary construction at county level — a Talbot County licence is issued by Talbot County — so there is no single statewide roster.

  Licensed by: county health departments. Check a licence yourself →

• Montana

  Installer certification is run by county health departments; Missoula, for instance, certifies its own installers before they may work in the county.

  Licensed by: county health departments. Check a licence yourself →

• Tennessee

  TDEC runs the permitting programme, but the installer and pumper lists that exist are published county by county — Hamilton and Madison counties each post their own — rather than as one statewide roster.

  Licensed by: county health departments, under TDEC. Check a licence yourself →

• New Jersey

  New Jersey has no statewide septic installer licence. Municipalities license and permit — Oakland runs its own contractor exam, for instance — so the lists that exist are town by town.

  Licensed by: municipal boards of health. Check a licence yourself →

Not applicable

• District of Columbia

  The District is effectively entirely on public sewer. There is no meaningful population of septic systems and no contractor registry to publish.

Not yet researched

25 states and territories have not been checked to a standard worth publishing. We would rather say that than invent an answer — getting the licensing authority wrong for a state is worse than admitting we have not looked.

If you are licensed in one of them, you can add your business →

Questions about coverage

Why is my state not listed?

There is no national septic registry — the EPA does not keep one, because these records are created locally, licence by licence. We publish 9 states so far and describe the status of 26 in total. The rest have not been researched to a standard worth publishing, and saying so is more useful than guessing.

My state licenses septic contractors. Why do you not have it?

Usually one of three reasons: the state publishes a search that answers one query at a time rather than a list, the site blocks anything that is not a browser, or the records exist only as county files. Each state above says which applies to it.

Can I add my business if my state is not covered?

Yes. Businesses in states we do not publish can add themselves, with a licence number so visitors can check the claim against the state directly. Those listings are kept visibly separate from the government records and are marked as unverified, because that is what they are.

Will you add more states?

Yes, as sources are found. The method that works is searching the state open data portals rather than guessing agency URLs — that is how Delaware and Missouri were found. If you know of a published list for a state above, tell us.