Metro’s grading permit, read for an Antioch lot
Antioch is a Davidson County community within Metro Nashville, not a city of its own. Grading permits come from the Development Services Division of Metro Water Services. Its test is size: disturb more than 10,000 square feet, or move more than 100 cubic yards of soil, and you need the permit. Filling, digging, laying pipe, cutting a ditch and changing a drainage channel all count as disturbance.
Under those numbers, Metro exempts a lot of small work. Routine landscaping and maintenance keeps its exemption only while the grade changes by 18 inches or less.
Why Mill Creek changes the math
Mill Creek is a 27.9-mile tributary that starts near Nolensville and winds through Antioch, Cane Ridge, South Nashville and Donelson. It is known to flood. In May 2010 it was the first place the major flooding hit, and at least five people died.
Metro’s exemptions do not apply in a designated floodplain. A lot in the Mill Creek floodplain can need the grading permit for a regrade that would be exempt two streets over. So before we price fill, a new swale or a house pad, we want to know where your lot sits on the flood map. We’ll go over which permit applies at the free estimate.
Old farmland, new building pads
Sewer lines and cheap farmland drove Antioch’s growth in the 1970s, and it is still one of the faster-growing parts of the metro. The 300-acre Oldacre McDonald tract near the old Hickory Hollow Mall, now Commons at the Crossings, is being redeveloped.
Former pasture tends to need fence-line trees and brush cleared, then a pad graded so water runs away from the building. On a commercial or multifamily site, Metro’s tree density rule comes into it too: 22 trees per acre for multifamily and non-residential sites, 14 for one- and two-family lots, and heritage trees of 24 inches or more surveyed on the final site plan.