Do You Need a Permit to Clear Land in Walton County?

Usually yes, in some form. Which form depends on your parcel, what you plan to build, and in this county more than most, on which side of Choctawhatchee Bay you are standing on. The county is the one who tells you what your lot needs. We clear lots on both sides of the bay and we still start every job by asking about that specific piece of ground, because the answer moves from parcel to parcel.

Start with what you are building

On most of the residential work we do, the clearing is not a standalone thing. It is tied to whatever is going on the lot, a house, a garage, a driveway, a pool. Know what you are building, ask the county about your parcel, then bring in a machine. Do it backwards and you can end up paying to undo something you already paid for.

The call we get most often is from somebody who just closed on a lot and wants every tree pushed into a pile the first weekend. The lot is yours, the trees are on it, nobody at closing said a word. Get the county to tell you where your parcel stands anyway, and if you do not know who to call or what to ask, call us and we will help you figure out who handles it.

South of the bay is a different world from north of it

Walton County is really two counties wearing one name. South of the bay you have the beach communities along 30A and Highway 98, Santa Rosa Beach, Miramar Beach, Seagrove, Grayton, Inlet Beach, and the rest. The lots are small, the neighbors are close, the sand is pure sugar, and on top of whatever the county asks about, a lot of those neighborhoods have their own opinions, in writing, about what comes down and what stays.

North of the bay, around Freeport, DeFuniak Springs, Ponce de Leon, Mossy Head, and up toward Paxton, the parcels get big. Five acres, twenty, old timber tracts and pasture. The questions the county asks tend to be different, the neighbors are a quarter mile off, and the ground changes under you. You run into clay and hardpan up there, mixed with sandy ridges, and it digs harder and holds water longer. The machine that walks across a lot in Seagrove will sink to the belly pan on a wet February morning outside DeFuniak.

Same county, two completely different jobs.

What the work looks like

With the paperwork settled, the clearing itself is straightforward heavy equipment work. Trees come down, stumps come out, roots get raked and picked, and the debris gets ground on site with our mulcher or loaded and hauled off. Hauling is usually the biggest single driver on a clearing bill. A tight lot in Seagrove with one narrow way in costs more to clear than an open five acres outside Freeport with the same trees, because everything has to be staged and shuttled instead of just loaded.

We run our own dirt pit at 3125 River Rd in Navarre, so when a job needs fill brought in or spoil taken away, that part stays simple. The longer rundown on how we handle land clearing is on our site.

The trees

The trees come up early in every conversation. Along 30A it is the scrub oaks and the old live oaks that people bought the lot for, and the neighborhood usually has an opinion about them before the county does. Whether a tree can come down, and what the county wants to see if it does, is a parcel question. Do not take anybody's word on it, ours included.

The part nobody warns you about is that a tree you meant to keep can die anyway. Pile fill over the root zone or run equipment under the canopy through the whole job and a mature oak will die just as dead as a saw would kill it, only it takes a couple of seasons, so nobody connects it back to the dirt work. If you want that tree, fence off the ground under it and keep the machines and the spoil pile out.

Wet ground

Walton County has water in every direction. Choctawhatchee Bay in the middle, the coastal dune lakes strung along 30A, the Choctawhatchee River bottom and its creeks north of the bay, and low ground all around Freeport.

If part of your lot holds water after a rain, or one corner of it grows vegetation that looks nothing like the rest, stop and get it looked at before a machine touches it. Wet ground can pull state and federal agencies into your project on top of the county. We are not qualified to tell you where the line falls on your parcel and neither is any other dirt contractor, so get a determination from somebody who does that for a living. We can point you toward who handles it.

Keeping the sand on your lot

Whatever your paperwork says, the sand becomes your problem the moment it crosses the property line, and along 30A the property line is close and the dune lake is closer. Silt fence goes up on the low side before the machines start, not after the first storm shows you where it should have been. We keep a state certified erosion control inspector on staff so the fence gets set where it does something.

Storms on this coast do not drizzle, they dump. Sugar sand travels fast and will not hold a slope, and clay north of the bay turns slick and holds water long after the rain quits. Either one gets away from you if nobody planned where the water goes.

NOBL Sitework is a licensed general contractor (CGC1537340) working across Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Escambia, and Bay counties. If you have a lot in Walton County you want cleared and you are not sure what it needs, call us at 850-238-3307. We will walk it with you, tell you straight what we see, and help you figure out who to ask about the rest.