Mebane, NC Environmental Rules: Erosion Control (2026)

Mebane UDO Section 5-7(A) blocks final site plan approval and final subdivision plat approval for any development that triggers land disturbing activity requiring an erosion and sedimentation control plan under North Carolina General Statute 113A-57(4), unless the state Land Quality Section, Division of Land Resources, NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, certifies either that a plan has already been approved, or that preliminary plans have been reviewed and an erosion control plan can reasonably be approved once the developer submits more detailed construction drawings.

In that second scenario, construction cannot start, and no building permits may be issued, until the Land Quality Section actually approves the plan. Section 5-7(B) defines land disturbing activity broadly, covering any residential, industrial, educational, institutional or commercial development, or highway and street construction and maintenance, that changes the natural cover or topography and may cause or contribute to sedimentation, except activities exempted under NCGS 113A-52(6). Sedimentation, as the ordinance describes it, occurs whenever solid particulate matter, mineral or organic, is carried by water, air, gravity or ice away from where it originated.

This section sits in Article 5 alongside Mebane's separate stormwater, watershed-overlay and flood-hazard-overlay rules, and Section 5-8 immediately after it is reserved, leaving erosion and sedimentation control as its own short, state-tied gate on development approval rather than a locally engineered numeric standard.