The city permit: an acre and a meeting
Murfreesboro’s Engineering Department has a Land Disturbance section on West Vine Street. It requires a Land Disturbance Permit for construction that disturbs one acre or more. The fee is $150 plus $50 for each acre or part of one, so a 2.5-acre site pays $300. Before work starts, the city requires a pre-construction meeting. A 10-acre site pays $650 by the same schedule, and on any permitted site that meeting comes before the first tree is cut.
What the USGS found under the city
Between January 2001 and April 2002, the U.S. Geological Survey studied sinkhole flooding with the City of Murfreesboro. Its three focus areas, east, north and northwest of the city, sit on Ridley Limestone with outcrops of Pierce Limestone. The report found that broad, shallow pan sinkholes flood when storm runoff pours into the depression. That flooding comes from water collecting in a closed low spot with no surface outlet. The study ran 16 months. Under an acre, the city permit doesn’t apply, but the water still does.
For a homeowner, a shallow dip that holds water after a storm may be one of those pans. Grading that sends more water into it, or fill that buries it, can push the flooding toward a neighbor or the house. We look at where water collects before we change the grade.
Rock, creeks and digging
The West Fork of the Stones River runs through the city, Lytle Creek through downtown by Cannonsburgh Village, and the Murfree Spring wetland holds 20 acres beside the Discovery Center. Published figures put the city at 39.2 square miles; the city’s own 2013 count was 55.94.
On limestone ground, a trench can meet rock, and rock changes the tool and the time. Tennessee 811 takes a locate ticket three to ten working days ahead of the dig, and the trench waits for the marks.