Can One Company Both Inspect and Remove Your Mold in New York?

No, and the reason is better than red tape. New York Labor Law section 947 makes clearance conditional on the assessment licensee determining that the underlying cause of the mold has been remediated so that it is reasonably certain the mold will not return, while section 930 defines remediation as removal, cleaning, sanitizing, containment and waste handling, with no reference to the moisture source. Section 936 then bars any licensee from performing both assessment and remediation on the same property, and bars common ownership between the two firms. In other words the state has arranged for somebody independent to have to ask whether the water is going to come back, and for that person not to be the one being paid to say no.

The clause that does the real work: clearance depends on the cause

Most explanations of New York's mold law stop at the two-company rule, which is the least interesting part of it. Section 947 requires a post-remediation assessment for a project to achieve clearance, and requires the assessment licensee to determine, among other things, that the underlying cause of the mold has been remediated so that it is reasonably certain that the mold will not return. Where the licensee finds it has not been, the statute has them recommend the contractor types needed to address the moisture or mold source. Set that against section 930, which defines mold remediation as the business of removal, cleaning, sanitizing or surface disinfection of mold, mold containment and waste handling, and does not extend that definition to the underlying sources of moisture. The state has written the job in two halves, put the water outside the remediation contract, and then refused to sign the project off until the water has been dealt with anyway. That is not a compliance footnote. It is the law making the same argument this business makes: drying it is not the fix, and in New York it is not even enough to close the file.

Why that clause bites harder in Scarsdale than almost anywhere

A clearance test written around whether the mold will return is only demanding if the water has somewhere to come back from. Here it does. The drainage study the Village of Scarsdale commissioned found the system in the Chesterfield Road and Fox Meadow Road area has less than a 1-year storm capacity, with several sections exceeding capacity and surcharging during the 1-year storm, the 2-year results similar, and almost the entire system surcharging at 10 years or greater. That report is a study recommending alternatives and seeking mitigation funding, not a completed project, and nothing in the public record says the work has been built. So in the studied area, reasonably certain that the mold will not return cannot honestly mean the rain will stop. It means somebody has established how the water reaches this particular building, which of those paths is a fault in the building, and what was done about it. That is a real question and it takes a site visit, not a moisture meter waved at a stain.

The separation rule, including the half most people have not read

Section 936 states that no licensee shall perform both mold assessment and mold remediation on the same property. Separately, and this is the clause that gets missed, it states that no person shall own an interest in both the licensee who performs mold assessment services and the licensee who performs mold remediation services on the same property. The bar is on common ownership, not merely on one company doing both jobs. That closes the obvious workaround of a group running an inspection brand and a removal brand out of the same office, and it means the right question to ask is not only who is doing the work but who owns the company that will sign it off. You are entitled to ask, and the answer should come without hesitation.

What you are owed in writing, and when

Section 946 requires a mold remediation licensee to prepare a remediation work plan specific to each project and give it to the client before work begins, to provide required personal protective equipment, to display signs indicating remediation is in progress, and to leave containment in place until clearance is obtained from an assessment licensee. Section 935 requires the assessment licensee to prepare a work analysis and give it to the client before remediation begins, and requires the remediation licensee to keep a copy of the work plan on site. So before a wall is opened you should be holding two documents, and if you are not, the sequence has gone wrong rather than fast. The plan is also the most useful cost-control tool an owner has, because it states the scope in advance. A scope that is written down after demolition tends to be larger than one written before it.

How to check a license in about two minutes

The New York State Department of Labor administers Article 32 and lists five mold-related licenses: Mold Assessor, Mold Assessment Contractor, Mold Remediation Contractor, Mold Abatement Worker Supervisor and Mold Abatement Worker. Assessment and remediation contractors must each carry liability insurance of at least $50,000 covering the licensed activities, and the licensing requirement took effect January 1, 2016. The Department publishes a Licensed Mold Contractors search tool and a separate Mold Individual Licenses search tool, which matters because a company license and an individual license are different documents and a firm can hold one without the other. Section 931 also makes it unlawful to engage in mold assessment on a project, or to advertise or hold out as a mold assessment contractor, without a valid license, with the equivalent prohibition for remediation contractors and abatement workers, and it requires a copy of the valid license to be conspicuously displayed at the work site on a mold project. If it is not on display at your house, ask for it before the crew starts.

When none of this applies to you, which is more often than you would think

The Department of Labor is explicit that a mold project means assessment, remediation or abatement of areas greater than ten square feet undertaken for the purpose of mold remediation or abatement, and that the mere presence of mold does not trigger any obligation to obtain an assessment or perform remediation. Its first licensing exemption is a residential property owner performing mold inspection, assessment, remediation or abatement on their own property. Put plainly: a patch smaller than a bath towel on a cold basement wall, in a house you own, is something you are entitled to clean yourself, and quite often should. The Department also says that in most cases air sampling and mold testing is unnecessary, since there are no EPA or federal standards for mold, so any interpretation of sampling results would not be based on any established health or environmental standard. If somebody is leading with a test rather than with the question of where the water comes from, that is worth noticing. The one caution from the EPA is that investigating hidden mold can itself disturb it, for example when removing wallpaper, so poking around behind finished surfaces is the point at which a small job can turn into a large one.

The two bills, and why nobody should pretend it is one

Because section 930 leaves the moisture source outside the definition of remediation, a mold contract and the repair that stops the water are separate pieces of work with separate prices, and an owner who budgets for one is going to be surprised. In this village the moisture source is frequently a plumbing or drainage defect rather than anything a mold crew touches. The Village's own list of common defects under its sewer program requires sump pump connections to the sanitary sewer to be disconnected and rerouted, and driveway drains, yard drains and roof leader downspouts connected to the sanitary sewer to be cut and rerouted, and it names offset joints, cracked pipe, significant sag, collapsed sections and root intrusion as infiltration sources. With 48.4 percent of Scarsdale's housing built in 1939 or earlier and a median year built of 1943, those are common findings. Expect the assessment to point at a trade, and treat a quote that silently includes the cause repair inside a mold price as the thing to question.

How this site handles the split

The assessment is booked first, with a licensed mold assessment contractor, and the report goes to you. If the finding points at a plumbing, drainage, roofing or masonry repair, that is said out loud and it is a separate appointment with a separate trade, because the statute puts it outside the remediation scope and because pretending otherwise would make the clearance meaningless. Remediation, where it is needed, is carried out by a separately licensed remediation contractor, and the clearance is issued by the assessor rather than by the crew that did the removal. Sometimes the assessment finds a humidity problem, a small patch and no building fault at all, and the right outcome is that you buy nothing further. That is a normal result and it is worth the visit, because the alternative is rebuilding a basement around an unanswered question. Send the details of what you are seeing and when it started, and the first step gets arranged.