Excavation and land clearing in Scarborough, Maine.

The town's erosion and sedimentation control ordinance applies to any work on a parcel that strips, grades, grubs, fills or excavates ground, and it requires an approved control plan before that work starts. Felling trees without grubbing or pulling stumps is not counted as disturbed area, so a lot can be cut and left with stumps outside the ordinance; once stumps come out, it applies.

The ordinance adopts Maine DEP's erosion control best-practice manual as the standard, calls for a stabilized construction entrance at every exit so mud stays off public roads, and requires a phasing plan whenever more than 5 acres will be open at one time. The Town Engineer enforces it.

Commercial properties built under a post-construction stormwater plan must have their detention basins and ponds inspected every year and repaired when they stop working as designed. Sediment removal, trenching and bank mowing are the kind of follow-up those inspections produce.

The same ordinance requires a stamped engineer's letter, before a certificate of occupancy is issued, certifying that the stormwater facilities were built as the approved plan shows. Basins and swales therefore get excavated to the drawings, with grades checked as the work goes.