August 13th, 2025

Hello oss Industry Professionals,

This third quarter newsletter highlights SCHD's proposed property transfer inspection program, a new resource for septic lid safety, and reporting & permitting reminders.

Proposed property transfer inspection program - seeking feedback! 

By February 2027, Washington state will require all OSS to be inspected when a property is sold or the deed is transferred. Snohomish County is working to develop this requirement locally. The proposed Property Transfer Inspection program was discussed at the most recent SCOPE meeting. You can also view an outline of our proposed Property Transfer Inspection program online. We are seeking input from groups such as real estate professionals and septic contractors before establishing the program in our Board of Health Code. If you have questions or feedback on the proposed program, please email SCBHC@co.snohomish.wa.us. 

Next Scope Meeting

Next Meeting Date: Thursday, November 6th 9:30-10:30am

Meeting Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85222036241

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If you missed a meeting, you can find meeting minutes on the Contractor Communications webpage. Meeting minutes are posted a within a few days after each SCOPE meeting.

Septic Lid Safety

If you are servicing a septic system and the lids cannot be secured due to damage or other issues, please inform the owner that these must be fixed asap! We understand that sometimes the property owner is not home. To address this, we created a door hanger that you can leave to notify the owner of this issue and how to correct it. Other counties such as King County are also beginning to make door hangers like these available. 

We would like to make door hangers available to septic professionals free of charge. If this is something you are interested in, please email savvy.septic@snoco.org to let us know how many doorhangers you anticipate using within a month’s time. This will allow us to stock up on enough doorhangers when placing our first order. 

Reporting reminders

There may be instances where the system components listed in OnlineRME don’t match what you see on-site during an inspection or pumping. This could be due to recent major repairs or system replacement. You can edit, add, or remove site components to a system that already exists in OnlineRME. To make changes for a property, go to “Site Information” and choose “Septic Components”. 

To Add: Enter information for the fields under “Septic System Components & System Information”, then click Add Component. 

To Remove: Below “Current Septic Components”, find the component to be removed, go to the far right Delete column, and click the red “X”. 

To Edit: Below “Current Septic Components”, find the component to be edited, go to the far left Edit column, and click the pencil icon. 

*For Tanks: While completing a pump report, you can also add, remove, or edit site tanks by clicking on the yellow “Edit/Define Site Tanks” button. 

Questions? Contact us!

Email: SHD-EHQ@snoco.org

Call: (425) 339-5250

Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found on our For Contractors webpage. 

This project has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreement PC-01J89801 to the Washington State Department of Health and under an assistance agreement to the Washington State Department of Ecology. The contents of this document do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.