(a) No person, the owner of any property or in possession or control of any property shall cause, permit or allow any excavating or filling to be done on such property unless a permit has been issued by the City Engineer for such excavating or filling. However, no permit shall be required for:
(1) Normal agricultural operations and normal residential landscaping and fence installation which does not interfere with planned drainage swales or which does not create conditions defined in Section 1352.04;
(2) Normal cemetery operations of opening and closing graves;
(3) Public work performed by or under control of the City Engineer or Department of Public Service except for excavating or filling performed outside the project work limits;
(4) Exploratory excavations under the direction of a registered professional engineer, soil engineer, engineering geologist, soil scientist, surveyor when operating within the practice of surveying, or architect where incidental to the practice of architecture. Exploratory excavations by a contractor or builder are permitted provided they are not made in a slope steeper than five horizontal to one vertical and are promptly and properly filled;
(5) Temporary excavations for wells, tanks, vaults, tunnels, sign foundations and trenches for utilities;
(6) Subject to the provisions of Section 1352.11, any excavation for a basement and footings of a building authorized by a valid permit, provided the excavation does not exceed ten feet in vertical depth at its deepest point or 500 cubic yards per each 5,000 square feet of site area, whichever is the more restrictive and is made in existing terrain with a slope flatter than five horizontal to one vertical, and subsequent filling with this excavated material on the same site, provided the fill does not exceed five feet in vertical depth at its deepest point or 500 cubic yards per each 5,000 square feet of site area, whichever is more restrictive, and is placed on existing terrain with a slope flatter than five horizontal to one vertical and does not result in a finished slope steeper than three horizontal to one vertical.
(b) No excavating or filling pursuant to subsection (a) hereof should cause any slope to become unstable, impose loads which may affect safety of structures or slopes, interfere with adequate drainage for the site area and the drainage area of land tributary to the site, obstruct, damage or adversely affect lawfully existing utilities or drainage, public or private, cause a stagnant pond of water to form or cause sedimentation or erosion.
(c) The exemptions contained in subsection (a) hereof do not apply to any operations conducted pursuant to Section 1352.04.
(Ord. 28-1992. Passed 12-21-92.)