What Mississippi requires
Pumping and cleaning an individual on-site wastewater disposal system in Mississippi requires a Certified Pumper credential from the Mississippi State Department of Health. The same certificate also covers lift stations, holding tanks, portable toilets, and grease traps, so a certified holder is not automatically a household septic company.
The certificate belongs to a person, not a company
This is the part that trips homeowners up. MSDH certifies individual people. A company appears in the state system only as the employer named on someone's certificate. A firm with three certified pumpers has three separate records, and a firm whose only certified employee has left may have none. Ask which certified individual will be on the truck, and check that person.
Verification steps
- Ask for the company name and the name of the certified pumper doing the work.
- Open the official MSDH certificate-holder search.
- Tick Certified Pumper(s) — leaving it unticked also returns installers and maintenance providers, who are not certified to pump.
- Type the person's surname in the Certificate Holders box and press Search, then open Details on the matching row.
- On the details panel, confirm the Certifed Pumper box is ticked, the company and county match, the Expire Date is still in the future, and the Suspend Date is blank.
Read the dates carefully
Mississippi certificates expire on September 30. A record whose expire date has passed is a lapsed certificate, not a current one — the search returns both. Of the 256 pumper records in the search on September 5, 2026, 110 had already expired. This directory publishes only unexpired, unsuspended certificates, but a certificate can lapse between our snapshot and your call.
How SepticByCounty presents the state list
We publish every unexpired, unsuspended in-state Certified Pumper, grouped into one card per company per county, with each certified individual named. MSDH does not publish a certificate number, so each card cites the MSDH record id that opens that holder in the official search. Because the certificate also covers portable toilets and grease traps, companies whose name never says septic carry a note asking you to confirm household septic work first. County is the holder's business county, not a promised service area, and names are shown in the uppercase MSDH stores them in.
Start with the Mississippi county directory, then re-check the official state record on the day you book.