8/3/2023 0 Comments Yard sales near lock haven paThose sorts of issues end up being a civil matter - not a regulatory one. Unless your municipality has an ordinance to cover such a scenario, there is very little the Conservation District or state regulatory agencies such as DEP can do. Perhaps the driveway across the street gets re-configured and starts shedding water onto your property. Or, perhaps, the neighbor installs a small brick patio or wooden fence that suddenly causes water to run onto your property. Let us say your neighbor installs gutters and downspouts and simply points them towards your house. But, if sheets of muddy water are pouring off plowed farm grounds onto your property, the Conservation District may be able to help, so, give us a call. The good news is, here in Clinton County, more than 65% of our farmers no-till and cover crop. Farmers can lower their soil loss by adopting best management practices such as no-till planting and cover cropping. Soil loss tolerance is the maximum amount of soil loss in tons per acre per year, that can be tolerated and still permit a high level of crop productivity to be sustained economically and indefinitely. As part of their plan, an erosion factor or soil loss tolerance (often called T) is calculated. But it is a little different when it comes to farms. Any agricultural plowing or tilling (including no-till) in excess of 5,000 square feet requires an Agricultural E&S plan to manage erosion. So, if there is a hotel or a factory or an apartment complex that is being, or has recently been, built next to you and you are suddenly flooded in stormwater, pick up the phone and call the Conservation District.įarming also must comply. Those permits are issued through Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and such permits require a site-specific Post-Construction Stormwater Management Plan to reduce stormwater volume and rate. In Pennsylvania, any land disturbance over an acre requires a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit under section 402 of the Federal Clean Water Act. ![]() Larger construction sites are fairly straightforward as well. Also, many municipalities have adopted storm water ordinances so a call to your municipal planning office may also prove fruitful. If you cannot work it out with your neighbor, the Conservation District should be your first call. ![]() So, if you neighbor is building a garage or installing a swimming pool and the mud’s running off their property onto yours, they either do not have an E&S plan, they haven’t installed best management practices or they haven’t installed those best management practices correctly. As part of that E&S plan, best management practices such as silt sock or silt fence will need to be used. Pennsylvania law requires that an you have an erosion and sedimentation (E&S) plan for any activity which disturbs more than 5,000 square feet of the surface of the land, including, but not limited to, clearing & grubbing, grading, excavations, land development, timber harvesting activities, road maintenance activities, mineral extraction, and the moving, depositing, stockpiling, or storing of soil, rock, or other earth materials. Let us start with some easy ones: small building and construction sites, tree harvests and land clearing. However, if a property owner does something that alters the natural flow of the stormwater, he or she may be liable to the neighbor for damages resulting from the alteration of that natural flow. Ordinarily, a property owner will not be held be liable for damages caused by stormwater flowing naturally onto a neighbor’s land. In Pennsylvania, the liability of a property owner for damages caused by storm or rainwater flowing onto the neighbor’s yard is often limited. ![]() The legal issues can be as muddy as the mess in your backyard. So, you may be asking yourself whose legal responsibility is it to fix the problem if a neighbor’s water runoff is draining onto your property. Even worse, when it does rain, there certainly seems to be an increase in the intensity of rain events and that increases runoff.
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