Elyria, OH Environmental Rules: Erosion Control (2026)

Chapter 960 of the Elyria Codified Ordinances, enacted by City Council as Ordinance 2008-18, is the City's erosion and sediment control law for construction. Section 960.03 applies it to all earth-disturbing activity on developed and undeveloped land in the City of Elyria, and § 960.04 makes the City Engineer the administrator and enforcer.

The permit triggers sit in § 960.18: a project that disturbs one or more acres, a project under one acre that belongs to a larger common plan of development or sale reaching one acre, or any job that moves 500 cubic yards or more of earth. Emergency work, existing nursery and agricultural operations and cemetery graves need no permit. The applicant pays a permitting fee, with the schedule kept under Chapter 109 (§ 960.31), and files a faithful performance bond, letter of credit or other security in an amount the City Engineer sets. The City Engineer has thirty calendar days to approve, approve with conditions or disapprove in writing, and silence past thirty days lets the applicant proceed on the plans as filed. A permit not acted on within one year is void.

No application is approved without a reviewed Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan (SWP3), which an Engineer must stamp (§ 960.24). Erosion and sediment controls must meet or exceed the current minimum standards of the Ohio EPA, and the City Engineer can ask for more stringent measures. Every control on the site must be inspected at least once every seven calendar days and within twenty-four hours after any storm event greater than one-half inch of rain per twenty-four hour period.

The permittee notifies the City Engineer forty-eight hours before earth-disturbing work starts and again at completion (§ 960.20). Written self-inspection reports go to the City Engineer on the schedule in the permit, and the permittee keeps the inspection record for three years after termination (§ 960.26). City inspectors can enter the site, and a control found deficient must be repaired by the date the City Engineer names (§ 960.27). The permit ends only when the City Engineer accepts a written termination request filed after final stabilization (§ 960.23).