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Selquist: Right.
Robertson: Under ground cover on page 14, and the time span, if a home is built in January
and grass seed is spread on bare soil with a little straw, would you consider this as being done
or finished?
Selquist: When you are laying ground cover, that's going to be part of the erosion control
ordinance. If you look at page 16, Sections 210, 211, and 212, there are some requirements
with on-going maintenance responsibilities. There could be an additional measure required.
Section 210 reads: "The person conducting the land -disturbing activity shall install and maintain
all temporary and permanent erosion and sedimentation control measures as required" They
will be required to put these in and maintain them. Section 211, under additional measures
says, "The person conducting the land disturbing activity will be required to and shall take
additional protective action." This is if what is in place is not working adequately. Also, under
Section 212, in existing and uncovered areas, it states that ground cover or other protective
structures or devices sufficient to restrain accelerated erosion and control off-site sedimentation
are required. So these three taken together are basically stating that you need to put the control
measures in place -- in this case -- vegetation, but you also need to maintain it and insure it is
operating sufficiently.
Robertson: Page 15, under Acceptable Management Measures, it reads, "Measures applied
alone or in combination to satisfy the intent of this section are acceptable if there are no
objectionable secondary consequences." Who gets to determine if they are objectionable? Is
that only the inspector or can it be neighbors or people downstream?
Selquist: This is saying you need to put control measures in place that will be suitable. They
will have to perform the way they were supposed to, and I would make that determination by
going out and making an inspection. A neighbor could call me to take a look, and I could
inspect it, or another person could make the inspection.
Robertson: So there aren't consequences unless you say the objection is legitimate.
Selquist: Correct, and a big part of this section is that it is performance based. The builder is
going to put control measures in place that are going to be suitable, and we would encourage
innovative techniques as long as it looks like it is going to work. But, again, if there are
objectionable situations occurring, we are going to require that they be fixed.
Robertson: The intent isn't to bust the chops of some guy building on a lot in a relatively flat
area that is away from a stream. We are really trying to protect the water, the property owners,
and the watershed areas. Especially the waterfront property owners who've already built, and
now there's a 200 -home subdivision being built 600 yards away uphill with massive areas being
bulldozed. All of a sudden a North Carolina storm produces an inch of rainfall, within an hour,
and this is when problems occur. The way the ordinance is written now is that it has to cross
the half -acre threshold. A lot of residential areas close to the lake are not one-half of an acre.
Certainly, when you take out the home or whatever is not disturbed, then there's not going to be
below that one-half acre. How are we going to make certain that someone doesn't come in,
subdivide the property, and allow many different builders, for many different owners, at different
times? How do we keep them from getting around this half -acre threshold? You could literally
have a 50 -acre subdivision with no one builder building more than one house, or applying for a
building permit at a time? How do we prevent that type of situation from getting under that wire
of the half -acre threshold?
Selquist: Let's say we have a 100 -acre subdivision and 100 builders, they would be able to get
around the ordinance. Also, if you had 100 lots that were sold and the owners hired builders,
then they could get around the ordinance. The way it is worded; however, if you have a builder
coming in and buying multiple lots -- say you have 20 builders to a 100 -acre subdivision, then
the lots to be developed would be aggregated. We would have to look at an estimated
minimum lot size for that subdivision. This would be one way to look at the situation. When you
have multiple lots, we are going to capture those, but you are right, this is something we might
have to review. A project could be arranged in order to circumvent the ordinance.
Robertson: There has to be someway to capture this. Otherwise, you could buy one lot on
Monday, one on Tuesday, and so forth. I would like to capture this so we don't have large-scale
subdivisions built that miraculously fall outside the ordinance.
Selquist: We could look into this.