What is a grading and excavation permit?

A grading and excavation permit must be obtained prior to any clearing, stripping, excavating, filling, grading, construction, or other activity involving the disturbance of the natural terrain or vegetative ground cover. This permit process intends to alleviate the harmful and damaging effects of on-site erosion and silt deposition on neighboring properties. These permits may be implicitly included with a normal building permit approval or approval of a final subdivision plat, or they may be applied for separately for any other type of grading or excavation. ... more