Hamilton County Conservation District (Hamilton County Earthwork Program)

Earthwork (Sediment and Erosion Control) Permit — commercial

Any earth-disturbing work for a commercial building or a parking area in unincorporated Hamilton County needs this sediment and erosion control permit from the Hamilton County Conservation District, and the county lists the Earth Movement Permit and the Soil and Water Conservation District among its own business permits. The one-acre threshold changes the shape of the charge completely. Below an acre, plan review is a flat $159.90 for a new building or a retaining wall and $106.60 for a shell, an addition, an accessory structure, a footing and foundation, a temporary structure or a demolition. At one acre or more, plan review becomes $159.90 per acre with a $1,000 minimum, and a $639.62 inspection fee covering twelve inspections is added, because the schedule requires monthly inspections for projects at or above an acre or forming part of a common plan of development — so a project that crosses the threshold by a fraction of an acre pays several times what it would have below it. A 5 per cent technology fee is assessed on all applications. The regulations behind the permit were adopted by the Board of County Commissioners on 1 November 1990 and run through the district's 2019 Rules and Regulations Article III. One provenance note belongs with these figures: the fee sheet the district links today from its own earthwork page carries the year only in its file name and prints no adoption or effective date on the sheet itself, so the figures are quoted as the schedule the district currently publishes rather than as a dated adoption. Site work sequencing matters as much as the fee: the county's development-process page places the earthwork permit, a Stormwater Drainage System or floodplain approval and a County Engineer driveway permit before the building permit, not after it.