MEDIA RELEASE


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 2, 2015

Person County Planning Department Changes As-built Survey Requirement

CONTACT: Mike Ciriello, 336.597.1750, mciriello@personcounty.net

Roxboro, NC —The Person County Planning Department no longer requires an as-built survey for every project. Instead, an as-built survey will only be required in two instances – 1. When construction is close to the property line and the setback requirement needs to be verified and 2. When projects in the Falls Lake Watershed are required to provide on-site stormwater control.

“Occasionally, it is important for the Planning Department to review existing procedures and ordinances to address confusion or improve the efficiency of the permitting process and the application of zoning ordinance standards,” said Person County Planning Director Mike Ciriello. “The requirement for ‘as built surveys’ is one of these. We operate in the mode of ‘trust, but verify’ when it comes to the enforcement of development standards. One of the tools our ordinances give us is a post-construction survey of a site to verify that the project has been built as it was approved. This is more commonly known as the ‘as-built’ survey.”

An as-built survey ensures that buildings are set back from a neighbor’s lot according to the law and provides an exact measurement of the area that is disturbed during construction. In the Falls Lake Watershed, the State requires that the Planning Department keep track of the quantity of land disturbed in the development process. The quantity of land disturbed will then be compared to the level of nutrients going into the Falls Lake drinking water supply. Tracking this could ultimately be very beneficial to the County. “If we can show that our level of land disturbance is having little or no impact on the drinking water supply, we will be in a stronger position to demand that the storm water regulations be changed,” said Ciriello.

Ciriello points out that the State only requires the County to verify and document post-construction, “as-built” surveys, for projects that have been required to provide on-site stormwater control. To meet that threshold would require that a project meet two additional standards. First, a residential project would have to exceed ½ acre or 21,780 square feet of disturbed area; and a non-residential project would have to disturb more than 12,000 square feet of disturbed area. If the project exceeds these levels, it would trigger the need for a stormwater plan which is used to evaluate if the area disturbed would result in the addition of more nutrients to the drinking water supply than the State allows.

In Person County, since the stormwater ordinance was adopted in 2012, only 4 projects out of 219 within the Falls Lake watershed have had to meet the requirement for an as-built survey.

The Person County Planning Department is one of Person County Government’s 26 departments and is funded by tax payer dollars. The Person County Planning Department is responsible for the land development standards adopted by the Board of County Commissioners as these impact the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Person County.
For additional information visit www.personcounty.net/stormwater.


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