Grant County Septic Permits: What GCHD Charges and the 2027 Inspection

Sourced from the Grant County Health District 2026 fee schedule (approved by the Grant County Board of Health, in effect July 9, 2026), GCHD’s on-site septic program, applications, operation and maintenance and service provider pages, GCHD On-Site Septic Ordinance 2025-03, and chapter 246-272A WAC — last checked August 2026. Where we could not source something, we say so.

What GCHD charges

Grant County Health District’s 2026 fee schedule was approved by the Board of Health and took effect July 9, 2026. These are the on-site sewage lines, with the district’s own codes.

Code	Service	Fee
E-200	On-site sewage permit	$1,044
E-200	On-site sewage permit, over 1,000 gpd (up to 2 finals)	$1,241
E-200	Each additional final inspection	$152
E-205	Repair permit, single-family residence	$260
E-205	Repair permit, non-single-family	$490
E-203	Alteration permit	$537
E-204	Tank-only permit, connection to community system	$537
E-202	Site registration — alterations, “suitability for septic” requests, first lot of a subdivision	$509
E-202	Each additional lot in the same subdivision, applied for at the same time	$98
E-206	Permit renewal or design revision	$191
E-207	Existing system evaluation (ESE)	$327
E-208	Connection to community system with an ESE completed in the previous 12 months	$98
E-209	Vault or pit permit	$295
E-201	Site visit to evaluate soil, where the design lacked information or had it wrong	$104
E-210	Installing without a valid start permit — on top of every other fee	$150
E-215	Paper copy of WAC 246-272A	$9
E-50	Hourly sanitarian rate	$98

And for the trades, because it explains why your quote looks the way it does:

Code	Service	Fee
E-211	Septic tank installer or pumper certificate	$309
E-212	Renewal	$164
E-212	Each additional vehicle	$105
E-213	Installer exam	$119
E-214	Septic system maintenance service provider certificate	$99

Statewide, published new-system permit fees run from about $500 in Klickitat to $1,890 in Spokane. Grant’s $1,044 sits just above the middle — a little more than Benton-Franklin’s $1,000, a little more than Grays Harbor’s $1,032 conventional permit, and well under Spokane.

The evaluation that costs less when you ask for more

This is the one worth knowing before you sell.

An Existing System Evaluation on its own is $327 (E-207). That is the septic system, by itself.

But over in the district’s drinking water program there is a different line: E-302, “Water System and On-site Sewage System Evaluation (Including VA/FHA Loan Cert)” — $242. Same septic evaluation, plus an evaluation of the water system, plus the loan certification a VA or FHA lender will ask for.

What you ask for	Code	Fee
Septic evaluation only	E-207	$327
Septic + water + VA/FHA loan certification	E-302	$242
Water system evaluation + VA/FHA loan cert only	E-301	$204

The bundle is $85 cheaper than the septic evaluation alone. If your buyer is using a VA or FHA loan, asking for the combined evaluation gets you more paperwork for less money. Ask for E-302 by name.

We are reading the district’s published fee schedule, not a quote. Confirm on the phone that E-302 fits your situation before you assume it, particularly if the property is not on an individual water system.

Grant County has actually told people about February 1, 2027

Most of eastern Washington has not. Grant has, in plain language on its own operation and maintenance page:

That matters more than it sounds. Of the twenty eastern and south-western jurisdictions we have checked, only a handful mention the date anywhere a homeowner would find it. Grays Harbor publishes an explicit “we do not require this” and never mentions that it is about to change. Benton-Franklin, two counties over, says nothing about 2027 on any of its septic pages. Grant tells you, and tells you when the detail is coming.

Until then there is no transfer inspection requirement in Grant County — but there is already an obligation. At the time of property transfer the district requires you to give the buyer all available maintenance and repair records, alongside the seller disclosure statement required under chapter 64.06 RCW.

The practical advice writes itself: the records you hand over in 2026 are the same records that will earn you a waiver in 2027. A local health officer may excuse the transfer inspection where the system already complies with routine inspection requirements. Start keeping them now.

How often GCHD wants your system inspected

The district’s own wording:

• Gravity systems that have only a septic tank and drainfield — every 3 years.
• Pressure systems or other kinds of septic system — every year.

Two conditions attached that catch people out. The inspection must be done by a Certified Maintenance Service Provider, and the report has to be submitted to GCHD — an inspection nobody filed is, as far as the district is concerned, an inspection that did not happen. Pumping must be done by a pumper certified to work in Grant County.

Everyone who touches your system has to be certified here specifically

This is a genuine local difference. Installing, pumping and inspecting on-site systems in Grant County all require certification from GCHD, not just a state license. A contractor who is perfectly legitimate in Adams or Kittitas is not automatically approved to work here.

All GCHD certifications expire on December 31 each year and must be renewed annually; renewal invoices go out in late November. If you are booking work in January, that is the month to ask whether your installer’s certificate has actually been renewed.

Becoming a certified installer means sitting the GCHD installer exam at the district office, by appointment, closed book, with a pass mark of 80%. Designers and professional engineers are licensed by the state Board of Registration instead.

Installing without a permit is a $150 line item — and that is the cheap part

The fee schedule prints it plainly: E-210, installation without a valid start permit, $150 — and the schedule notes that the application, renewal and other fees are still required on top.

$150 looks survivable. What it does not cover is the part that actually costs money: a system the district has not inspected is a system that may have to be uncovered, corrected, or in the worst case dug up and redone. There is also a $104 line (E-201) for a site visit to evaluate soil “due to lack of information or misinformation with a septic design” — the district charges for cleaning up bad paperwork.

The most expensive line on the schedule

Buried in the land use and planning group is E-259, “Table XII” Nitrogen Loading Review — $1,305. That is more than the septic permit itself, and more than any other single line in the on-site sewage or land use groups.

It is printed alongside the plat and site-plan review fees (short plat $522, long plat or binding site plan $783, plat alteration $391), which is where a nitrogen loading question would normally arise. We could not source what triggers the review or who has to pay it. If you are subdividing anywhere in the Columbia Basin, it is worth asking about before you budget.

The practical bits

Grant County Health District	1038 W Ivy Ave, Suite 1, Moses Lake, WA 98837
Phone	509-766-7960
Urgent public health, after hours	509-398-2083
Fax	509-766-6519
Office hours	Monday–Thursday 8:00am–4:00pm; Friday 8:00am–12:00pm — closed the first Friday of each month
County building permits	Grant County Building Division, (509) 754-2011 ext 3001

Two things about how GCHD takes applications. Paper submissions must be printed on paper no larger than 11 by 17 inches. Electronic submissions are accepted by email, but the fillable forms have to be opened in Adobe to work — filling them in a browser preview will lose your entries.

Septic and potable water review is part of the county’s building permit process: the Building Division routes submittals to GCHD for that review. If you are building, expect both offices to be involved.

Where the rules come from

Two things changed recently and they are easy to confuse.

The statewide rule, WAC 246-272A, was revised and took effect April 1, 2025. GCHD updated its own ordinance to match — Ordinance 2025-03, effective February 1, 2025 with some changes following on April 1, 2025.

The district’s summary of where that leaves things is the clearest one-line statement of the position we have found anywhere in the state: all parts of the new rule are now in effect except property transfer inspections. Those are the part waiting for February 1, 2027.

What we could not source

• What triggers the $1,305 Table XII nitrogen loading review. The fee is published; the trigger is not.
• Whether a county building permit application must come before a septic application. We have seen this described elsewhere but could not confirm the sequence on either the district’s or the county’s own pages. Ask both offices rather than assuming.
• What GCHD will charge to file a 2027 transfer inspection report. No line item exists yet. Statewide the comparable charge runs from $0 in Spokane to $480 in Pierce.
• How many on-site systems are in Grant County. Not published anywhere we could find.
• Any local certification deadline for maintenance providers. We have seen a claim that O&M providers here face an additional certification standard from 2026; we could not confirm it on GCHD’s own pages and are not repeating it as fact.

Sources

• Grant County Health District, 2026 Fee Schedule, in effect July 9, 2026 — granthealth.org
• Grant County Health District, On-Site Septic Systems — granthealth.org
• Grant County Health District, On-Site Septic System Operation & Maintenance — granthealth.org
• Grant County Health District, On-Site Septic Applications — granthealth.org
• Grant County Health District, On-Site Septic Service Providers — granthealth.org
• GCHD On-Site Septic Ordinance 2025-03
• WAC 246-272A, on-site sewage systems; chapter 64.06 RCW, seller disclosure