Site work
Bellevue clearing, grading, and drainage permits for homeowners
Site work is often where a simple home project becomes a civil-engineering project. The amount of disturbed area matters, but so do slopes, trees, walls, drainage connections, and protected areas.
On this page7 sections
Official starting point: Bellevue minor clearing and grading. Check the current page before acting because forms and rules can change.
Screen the scope before drawing
- Estimate total clearing area and excavation or fill volume.
- Identify retaining walls, rockeries, driveway work, trenches, and material stockpiles.
- Map significant trees, critical areas, buffers, easements, and the public right-of-way.
- Trace where roof, footing, driveway, and yard runoff will go.
Know the common stand-alone thresholds
Bellevue identifies landscape changes over 1,000 square feet of clearing or over 50 cubic yards of grading, as well as certain walls over four feet, among the work that can require a minor clearing-and-grading permit. Critical areas or surcharge loads can trigger review below a simple height or volume threshold.
Treat erosion control as active work
A CSWPPP is not a filing exercise. Stabilized access, inlet protection, sweeping, sediment maintenance, daily inspection during active work, and storm-event response need an assigned person and budget from first disturbance through final stabilization.
Coordinate the civil documents
Survey, site plan, grading, drainage report, civil plans, landscape plan, arborist report, and architectural site plan should use the same grades, walls, trees, utilities, and building footprint. Conflicts between sets create predictable review comments.
Confirm separate connections and access
A storm connection, side sewer, or right-of-way permit may be required even when the building permit includes on-site work. List each related permit and its dependencies so one approval does not quietly hold up issuance or construction.
Practical homeowner guide
The civil plan should explain how water and earth move
Bellevue's residential civil-plan guidance connects existing and proposed grades, two-foot contours, trees, easements, utilities, walls, clearing limits, erosion control, drainage, and critical areas on one coordinated set.
Part 1 · Existing
Survey the site
Show topography, property lines, easements, trees, structures, walls, utilities, and critical-area information. Missing existing conditions make proposed cut, fill, drainage, and protection measures harder to verify.
Part 2 · Proposed
Quantify disturbance
Map finished grades, walls, paving, buildings, utilities, clearing limits, stockpiles, access, and erosion controls. Include temporary construction impacts, not only the finished yard.
Part 3 · Drainage
Follow water to its outlet
Explain roof, driveway, yard, and wall drainage from collection through conveyance, treatment or detention if required, and lawful discharge. Check how the design affects neighboring property.
Common questions
What homeowners usually ask
Why does Bellevue ask for two-foot contours?
Contours provide a consistent picture of terrain for grading, drainage, access, walls, and critical-area review. Spot elevations and sections are still needed at important design locations.
Can a small house project avoid civil coordination?
Even modest work can affect drainage, trees, utilities, slopes, or the right-of-way. The required document level varies, but the physical conflicts still need to be solved before construction.
What is the best early drainage question?
Ask where water comes from now, where the project will collect it, and where it can legally and safely go afterward. Verify elevations and utility information before assuming gravity drainage works.
Action plan
Scope the site work before submission
- 1
Calculate disturbed area, cut, fill, export, walls, trenches, and driveway work.
- 2
Overlay trees, critical areas, easements, utilities, ROW, and construction access on one survey.
- 3
Trace every drainage source to its proposed discharge or management facility.
- 4
Make architectural, civil, landscape, arborist, and geotechnical documents agree.
- 5
Assign daily erosion-control maintenance and storm-response responsibility during construction.
Official resources