Kittitas County Septic Permit Costs and Lot Size Rules

Sourced from Kittitas County Public Health’s on-site sewage pages and permit application forms, Kittitas County Code Title 13 as published on the county’s current code platform, county ordinances 2024-007 and 2024-008, and chapter 246-272A WAC — last checked August 2026. Where we could not source something, we say so.

What it costs

These are the fees printed on the county’s On-Site Sewage Installation Permit Application, version 7, adopted January 9, 2025. It is the most recent dated fee source we could find anywhere on the county’s website.

A new residential build on a private well therefore starts at $790 + $915 = $1,705 in county fees for the simplest gravity system, before a designer or an installer is paid anything. The same permit boxes cover new work, repairs, modifications and expansions — the price is set by the type of system, not by why you are building it.

Finding those numbers is the hard part

Kittitas County’s on-site sewage page ends with a line in capital letters: “PLEASE VIEW THE CURRENT KITTITAS COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH FEE SCHEDULE FOR CURRENT OSS FEES.”

That link points to a file named 2021-Fee-Schedule-Policy.pdf. When we followed it in August 2026, it returned the county’s 404 page. So the sentence instructing you to check the current fees points at a five-year-old filename that no longer exists.

Immediately above it, the page’s Forms section displays “There was a problem locating files.” The three application links in the body text point into a /forms/ folder that also 404s. The working copies of those same PDFs sit in a /permits/ folder — a path the page does not link to. We found them through a search engine, not through the county’s own navigation.

The provider lists have the same problem in a milder form. As of August 2026 the county publishes “2022 OSS Licensed Installers” and “2020 Licensed Septic Pumpers.” A Kittitas County license is required for anyone installing systems or pumping tanks in the county, so those rosters matter — and they are four and six years old.

None of this means the county is doing anything wrong in the field. It means the published record has drifted from the working practice, and a homeowner researching from a laptop will not find the price of a septic permit without knowing exactly where to dig.

Design approval is not your permit

This is the sequence trap in Kittitas, and the county states it clearly enough that it is worth quoting the substance: once your design has been reviewed and approved, Public Health notifies you of the approval — and that notification is explicitly not the issuance of an installation permit.

When the system is actually ready to go in, the licensed installer or the homeowner has to request the installation permit separately, by email or in person. Only then does the clock start:

Two failure modes follow from this. Requesting the permit too early burns months of a one-year window while you wait on an excavator. Letting it lapse without a renewal application in hand means there is no renewal to grant.

Whether your lot qualifies is decided by a rule from 1972

Kittitas rewrote its septic code in 2024. Ordinances 2024-007 and 2024-008 replaced Chapter 13.04, “On-Site Sewage Disposal Systems,” in its entirety. What the chapter says now, complete and in full, is one sentence:

“The Washington State Administrative Code Relating to On-Site Sewage Disposal Systems (WAC 246-272A) is adopted by reference.”

That is the whole chapter. Every local lot-size number, setback and standard that used to live there is gone from 13.04.

But they are not gone from the code. They survive one chapter over, in 13.08, “Private Sewage Disposal Systems in Plats” — and almost every operative line there still carries the citation Res. 72-69, 1972. On the county’s current code platform, these read:

The practical consequence is the one-acre line. If you are putting a well and a septic system on the same parcel — which is most rural building in Kittitas County — the binding minimum is an acre, and it is set by a 1972 resolution filed under plats, not by the chapter with “On-Site Sewage Disposal Systems” in its title.

The document that will get you the wrong answer

A 23-page redline draft of the 2024 Chapter 13 revisions is still sitting on the county’s own web server, under a public-notice folder. It is exactly what it looks like: a working document, thick with struck-through text, showing the old rules being deleted.

It is not the law. It was the proposal. But it is indexed, it is on a genuine county domain, and it is full of confident-sounding lot minimums and setbacks that were repealed. Anyone — a search engine summary, an AI answer, a hurried agent — who quotes numbers from that PDF is quoting repealed law.

If you are checking a Kittitas requirement, the test is simple: the operative code lives on the county’s current code platform under Title 13. The old county-hosted code pages now carry their own banner saying the code there “is no longer current and is retained solely for historical reference.” A PDF in a notices folder is not a source at all.

Homeowners can still do the work here

Kittitas is on the permissive side of a line that other Washington counties have moved. Walla Walla banned homeowner design outright in 2023. Kittitas allows it:

• Homeowners may prepare their own system design — but a pre-design meeting with an Environmental Health Specialist is required first, and the fee for a homeowner design is not published as a flat number.
• Homeowners may install their own system. Anyone doing it as a contractor needs a Kittitas County OSS installer license.
• Septic tank pumpers contracting in the county need a Kittitas County license too.

The inspection rules do not bend for homeowners. Every installed system is inspected by an Environmental Health Specialist before final approval, the as-built and any electrical components must be finished before a final inspection can even be scheduled, and no drain field may be backfilled before that final inspection.

Digging your test holes right

The site evaluation is the county’s own specialist coming out to read your soil, and the holes are your responsibility, not theirs. The county asks for two holes, six feet deep and three feet wide, with step-side access, placed in the proposed drainfield and the reserve drainfield areas.

Two details are easy to miss and expensive to get wrong. The requester is responsible for having boundary and utility lines located before any digging. And incomplete applications are not held — they are sent back, which puts you at the end of the queue rather than in a correction loop.

If you are selling in Kittitas County

We found no local rule requiring a septic inspection at property transfer in Kittitas County, and no mention anywhere on the county’s septic pages of the statewide change under WAC 246-272A-0270 that takes effect February 1, 2027.

Because 13.04 now adopts the state rule by reference, the state framework is what will apply here — but the county has published nothing about how it intends to receive those inspections, who may perform them, or what it will charge to review one. Sellers closing in 2027 should call before assuming either way.

What we could not source

• A working current fee schedule. The link the county’s own page directs you to returns a 404. The figures above come from the January 9, 2025 application form, which is the most recent dated fee source we found. Confirm by phone before paying.
• The homeowner design fee. The form says “varies, contact EH” and gives no number.
• Any renewal, reinspection, or late fee. No such line items appear on the application forms, and the fee schedule that would list them is the missing document.
• Any county position on the February 1, 2027 statewide transfer inspection. Nothing found on any county page.
• Current provider lists. The published installer list is dated 2022 and the pumper list 2020. The designer list carries no date at all.
• How many on-site systems are in the county. Not published anywhere we could find.

The practical bits

Sources

• Kittitas County Public Health, Environmental Health Programs — Liquid Waste — co.kittitas.wa.us
• Kittitas County, On-Site Sewage Installation Permit Application, version 7, adopted January 9, 2025 — co.kittitas.wa.us
• Kittitas County, Application for Site Evaluation — co.kittitas.wa.us
• Kittitas County Code Chapter 13.04, On-Site Sewage Disposal Systems (Ord. 2024-007 and Ord. 2024-008)
• Kittitas County Code Chapter 13.08, Private Sewage Disposal Systems in Plats — ecode360.com
• WAC 246-272A, on-site sewage systems; WAC 246-272A-0270, inspection at property transfer