Permitting & Regulatory Coordination
We carry restoration and shoreline projects through state, federal, and local review, acting as the owner's agent with MDE, USACE, and county and municipal reviewers from the first pre-application meeting to the final permit condition.
Our approach
Permitting goes best when it starts before the design is finished. We meet with the Maryland Department of the Environment and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers early, shape the layout to avoid and minimize wetland and waterway impacts, and prepare the Joint Permit Application plan set with the detail reviewers expect. We handle tidal and nontidal wetlands licensing, water quality certification, Critical Area and floodplain coordination, and county erosion and sediment control and stormwater approvals, and we respond to agency comments with revised plans rather than letters. After authorization we track permit conditions, including in-water work windows, monitoring, and as-built submittals, so that construction and the years that follow stay in compliance.
Typical analyses and design considerations
- Pre-application meetings with MDE, USACE, and local reviewers
- Joint Permit Application preparation and plan set
- MDE tidal wetlands license and nontidal wetlands authorization
- USACE permits, including state programmatic general permits
- Impact avoidance, minimization, and mitigation
- Chesapeake Bay Critical Area and floodplain coordination
- County and municipal erosion and sediment control and stormwater approvals
- Responses to agency comments and plan revisions
- Permit modifications for phased or changed work
- Permit conditions, monitoring, and as-built submittals
Project applications
Shoreline, wetland, stream, dredged material, and stormwater projects that need federal, state, and local approvals, including reauthorization of phased projects and permit support added to designs already in progress.
Related services - Often paired with this work.
Restoration and resiliency projects rarely involve a single service. These are the services we most often deliver alongside this one.
- Shoreline Restoration. Living shorelines and hybrid stabilization that stop erosion with breakwaters, sills, sand fill, and planted tidal marsh instead of hardened bank. Learn more →
- Stormwater Management. Pond retrofits, submerged gravel wetlands, bioretention, and new practices sized to local criteria and built to be maintained. Learn more →
- Construction Support. RTK GPS stakeout, construction observation and administration, field redlines, as-built survey, and the monitoring that follows. Learn more →
Have a project in mind?
Contact Sustainable Science, LLC to discuss how we can support planning, permitting, design, and construction.