City Ups Ante on Land Disturbance Permits

One of the hardest permits to obtain in Chattanooga related to building projects—the land disturbance permit—just got harder to secure. The City of Chattanooga recently added several new requirements that could delay the permitting process and will definitely add cost to your building project.

What is a Land Disturbance Permit, and who needs one?

A land disturbance permit gives an owner or a contractor the right to disturb the land on a piece of property. The basic premise is that the city uses this permit to assure that the appropriate water quality control devices will be put in place before and during construction. You have probably seen a ground-up construction project where a grading contractor comes in with heavy equipment and strips and removes most of the vegetation and whatever else may be on a site. Before this can start, a land disturbance permit must be issued.

Projects of a lesser scope also require land disturbance permits. You want to add a couple of parking spaces to your parking lot? You’ll need a land disturbance permit for that. You want to build a small addition to your office building? That too will require a land disturbance permit. In fact, most projects that involve building additions and/or site improvements will require this permit.

What Was Required in the Past?

Until recently, it had been a while since the requirements for a land disturbance permit had changed. Obvious requirements were civil and/or building plans showing the proposed work. These plans would include information on erosion control protection measures as well as storm water (rain) runoff data. This information, provided by your engineer, would show your previous storm water runoff quantity and compare it to the projected runoff quantities after the improvements are in place. Any additional runoff would most likely have to be detained on site with a detention pond or some other approved measure. If you were adding to your parking lot, you would most likely be required to add protective measures to keep oil from the parking lot working its way into the city’s storm water system.

In the past, the focus of the city’s water quality control efforts was to ensure the contractor controls silt runoff during construction and that permanent control measures are put in place. The city left it up to the property owner to make sure that these water quality control devices were maintained and kept in proper working order after the project was complete.

What are the new Requirements?

 The city now requires the owner to enter into an Inspection and maintenance agreement of private storm water management facilities. What this requires of the owner is to maintain things such as oil skimmers and detention ponds. This agreement must be signed by the owner, notarized, and recorded at the Register of Deeds’ office. One interesting feature of this agreement is that it gives the city the right to come onto your property, inspect your storm water quality control features and notify you of any deficiencies. The property owner then will have thirty days to make corrections. Should the property owner fail to make those corrections, the city then has the right to make those corrections and invoice the owner for the cost of those corrections and also for the cost of the enforcement action.

Another new requirement involves a form titled “BMP (Best Management Practices) Tracking for New Construction and Redevelopment form”. This form outlines what storm water quality control features are on site and what maintenance will be done by the owner to keep these features in proper working order. In my opinion, this is actually a good idea. In my many years of building, I can tell you that instructing owners on the proper maintenance related to storm water quality control features has not been a common priority.

It’s All About the Delivery

As I have preached to the Strauss team, how you deliver a project is as important as what it looks like in the end and the timeliness of turning the building over to the owner. As a proud father, I have watched my wife deliver three children. I saw the dedication of nurses, doctors, and, in our case, a midwife, in making sure the deliveries happened successfully with a minimal amount of pain and complications. Through a well designed program, the hospital educated us as to what we could expect on delivery day. Our city administrators who handle the storm water program could take some lessons from the well-trained medical field. The city did not announce the additions to the requirements for a land disturbance permit in advance. You literally found out about the new requirements after submitting for the permit. There wasn’t even an updated checklist provided to contractors or engineers outlining these new requirements. As I said before, these new requirements were fed to you as you slowly went through the process. Unfortunately, this led to delays of several weeks in obtaining a land disturbance permit simply because no one outside of city officials was aware of these new requirements.

The Final Verdict

I think the new requirements are well intentioned and will make property owners better aware of maintaining their storm water quality control features. No doubt, a few property owners may have heartburn signing an agreement with the city that will be recorded on their deed. In the end, if you keep your property up, there shouldn’t be any issues. My contest with the new requirements is not with the product, but with the delivery. The city could have achieved good will and smoother implementation for the new requirements by preparing an educational program for builders prior to rolling out the new requirements. Most builders know it is important to keep their customers in the loop and to educate them as to what to expect on their building project—this is part of a customer’s expectation in a business deal. Most private business owners also know that their business lives or dies in their ability to meet customer expectations. By better educating the construction community about the new requirements, the city could have aided local businesses in meeting customer expectations, and allowed the new requirements to make a positive first impression.