Do you need a permit to clear land in Baldwin County?
Sometimes, and the trigger is size and purpose. Alabama’s ADEM requires Construction General Permit coverage once clearing or grading disturbs one acre or more, or any site inside a larger development plan. Baldwin County adds its own layer in zoned districts: a Construction Best Management Practices Plan and enforced wetland setbacks. Small maintenance work is generally exempt.
Permits are the least glamorous part of land clearing and the most expensive to ignore, so here is the honest map of who regulates what on Baldwin County ground, straight from the state and county sources.
Who regulates clearing here?
Three layers, stacked:
| Authority | What triggers it | What it requires |
|---|---|---|
| ADEM (state) | 1+ acre disturbed, or part of a common plan of development | CGP coverage: NOI via the AEPACS portal, erosion-control plan by a credentialed professional |
| Baldwin County | Land disturbance in zoned districts; wetlands/streams on parcel | CBMPP form + site plan; wetland setbacks; no wetland fill without variance + state/federal permits |
| Cities (Daphne, Foley, etc.) | Municipal land-disturbance thresholds | City land-disturbance permits inside city limits |
The state layer is the big one. ADEM’s Construction General Permit, updated for 2026, defines construction broadly - clearing, grubbing, grading, excavating, and filling all count - and the one-acre threshold includes smaller sites that belong to a bigger plan, which is exactly what a subdivision lot is. Coverage means filing a Notice of Intent through ADEM’s online system with an erosion-control plan prepared by a Qualified Credentialed Professional, and the state’s application fee alone runs over a thousand dollars, which tells you how seriously they take it.
What does Baldwin County add on top?
Erosion and wetlands discipline. In zoned planning districts, the county’s zoning ordinance requires a Construction Best Management Practices Plan submitted with your site plan, showing the disturbance area and any wetlands or streams with their setbacks. The county publishes a map viewer for checking whether wetlands or streams touch a parcel, and its ordinance enforces non-disturbed wetland setbacks around them.
The hard line is fill: no wetland fill is allowed without the county’s wetland variance and permit plus the state and federal authorizations behind it. We wrote a whole companion guide on clearing near wetlands, because on coastal Baldwin ground it is the single easiest way to turn a routine clearing job into a federal problem.
What clearing work is exempt?
More than people fear, less than people hope. ADEM’s own coverage rules exempt normal agricultural and silvicultural activity, and minor disturbances like fence installation, home landscaping, and repairs. In practice that means routine bush hogging, pasture maintenance, and keeping your own ground mowed are not permit events, and neither is typical small-scale brush cleanup.
The line moves when the purpose is construction. Forestry mulching an overgrown lot to enjoy it is maintenance; mulching and grubbing the same lot as step one of a build is pre-construction land disturbance, and the acreage math starts counting. When the answer genuinely depends on your parcel and plan, the reliable move is a call to the county or, inside city limits, the city’s planning office before the machines mobilize.
How does this work when you hire us?
We keep the boring parts handled. On residential jobs, silt fence and stabilized entrances go in where the ground and the inspector call for them, disturbed ground gets stabilized when we finish, and anything about your parcel that smells like permit territory - the acreage, a creek, a low spot that stays wet - gets said out loud at the walk-through instead of discovered by an inspector later.
If you are planning a clearing or build on Baldwin ground and want the permit picture for your specific parcel before you spend anything, call (251) 747-7839 or start at the contact page. The walk-through is free, and so is the straight answer.