Learn how to apply for and manage your Erosion & Sediment Control Permit. ESC Supervisors can access the online supervisor portal.

When Do You Need an Erosion & Sediment Control Permit?

You must have an Erosion & Sediment Control (ESC) Permit for all construction projects that have a disturbed area equal to or greater than 2,000 square metres.

The ESC Permit process establishes a framework to ensure that mandatory standards are applied to construction site ESC planning and management, which is conducive to the proposed construction, scheduling and specific site conditions, such as:

  • site drainage
  • topography
  • soil characteristic

See the complete requirements for larger construction sites.

ESC Permit Applications

Erosion & Sediment Control Permit applications are made through the City's Engineering Department and need to be issued prior to the release of associated construction permits.

ESC Permits are commonly associated with, but not limited to:

Fill out the ESC Application package and submit your hardcopy application to the Engineering Department. Allow 2 to 4 weeks for processing. Complete your application in as much detail as possible to prevent processing delays. Any questions can be directed to escbylaw@surrey.ca or 604-592-6936. 

Any correspondence with the City of Surrey should contain your ESC file number (45XX-XXXX-XX) to ensure a timely response.

ESC Supervisor Reports

Once you have your ESC Permit issued, direct your ESC Supervisor to the online ESC Supervisor Reports Portal. 

ESC Supervisor Reports Portal

Reports must be submitted on a weekly basis unless special arrangements have been made. Reports are also required after a significant rainfall event (at least 25mm in a 24-hour period). Use the City of Surrey rain gauge to see rainfall data.

Need help? Additional application documents and supporting information on the ESC Permit are provided below.

Documents

Guides

Resources

Portal Update

We are working on a new portal and user experience to streamline how business is conducted under Erosion and Sediment Control Permits in Surrey. The new ESC Inspection Portal will be integrated into MySurrey.

ESC Portal Overview

The new ESC Supervisor Portal, while encompassing the functionality of the existing portal, will include many new features. To aid in helping users understand some of the connectivity between the different pages and where to find information, check out the detailed site map to help users easily navigate around the site.

Learn more about the ESC Supervisor Portal

Learn about the New ESC Supervisor Portal

Features and functions associated with the management of your ESC Permit are under the Permit Details section.

New User Dashboard

The portal's focus is to ensure that users have the right tools and information at their fingertips so that they can efficiently and effectively manage their ESC Permits reporting obligations. The new redesigned user dashboard provided users just that–an array of features to help you make the needed decisions, regardless of whether you have just one permit or forty permits.

Learn more about the User Dashboard

New Scheduling Calendar

When faced with lists of inspection deadlines across many permitted sites, it is often difficult to visualize and prioritize which of your sites need to be inspected and reported on first. Many users have put forward the idea of having a calendar view to help them quickly analyze their inspection workload. The new portal incorporates this feature and takes it one step further by making the calendar interactive to allow users to drill deeper into their inspection schedule and to look ahead at their workload.

Learn more about the Scheduling Calendar

Permit Details

In the existing portal, the ESC Permit Details section was only able to provide a high-level overview of some of the permit information and status updates. Version 2.0 in the new Portal has made this an integral part of how the ESC Supervisor manages and views the ESC Permit. 

Under the Permit Details section ESC Supervisors will be able to track the permit status step by step, download documents, see permit metrics & bonding information, and more.

Learn more about Permit Details

New Category: Regulated BMPs

Wheel Washes, Flocculent Treatment Systems, and Sediment Control Ponds are core BMPs that often are accompanied by site challenges. These challenges result in significant performance concerns and as such have required checkpoints ensuring that they are installed, maintained, and decommissioned appropriately.

To manage these BMPs, a new category called ‘Regulated BMPs’ has been created that will facilitate the management of these BMPs moving forward.

Learn more about Regulated BMPs

New ESC Plan Requirements

As part of the new category for BMPs, there will be additional information that will need to be collected during the ESC Plan review stage of the permit process. While much of the required information is already provided on most of the ESC Plans that are submitted, the information outlined in the link is now mandatory. Please make sure the drawings you review have this information stated to prevent information requests.

Learn more about the Plan Requirements

Managing the Inspection Frequency through the Portal

In Surrey, we recognized that a one size fits all approach to site inspections, while easy to apply, wasn’t the best fit for balancing regulations with doing business. Flexibility however comes with other issues as we try to manage over 850 active construction files. 

To make things more efficient and streamlined, the new Portal will allow ESC Supervisors to request and manage changes to the inspection frequency via a new online process.

Learn more about the Inspection Frequency Changes

New Process for Submitting Permit Closures

It’s inevitable that for every ESC Permit, there comes a point in time when it needs to be closed. A year ago, we started a new checklist process to reduce the percentage of closure inspections that didn’t pass the first time; dropping the failure rate from 90% to 30%, thus reducing the processing delays considerably. When processing between 140 to 190 closures per annum, efficiency matters.  

Learn more about Permit Closures

New Process for Retracting services as the ESC Supervisor

Sometimes reasons come up that require the ESC Supervisor to step back from providing services to their client. To simplify the process and to ensure that the ESC Permit remains in compliance, this workflow scenario has also been added to the new Portal.

Learn more about the Retraction of Service

New Rainfall and SRE Handling

Reporting on significant rainfall events (SREs), defined as precipitation events where the mean weekly rainfall occurs within a 24 hour period, is a core requirement of the ESC Permit and work function of being an ESC Supervisor. The new ESC Portal includes many improvements and changes to refine how SRE inspections are managed.

Learn more

New Missed Report Submission Process

The new ESC Portal offers you greater flexibility to complete reports that weren’t submitted before the submission deadline.

Learn more

Targeted Emails Sent on Submissions

Sending your client or the contractor a copy of the submitted ESC Inspection report usually takes several steps: retrieve a copy, prepare the correspondence, and click send. Now you don’t need to think about any of that. Once you submit the inspection report, the system will take care of all of that with a few added measures included.

Learn more

New On-Maintenance Inspection Process

Land Development-related ESC Permits have a transition phase between the site servicing and the release of the lots for house construction that has always been problematic for many reasons.

The new ESC Portal has a new milestone under the ESC Permit, minimizing many of the conflict points that accompanied this transition process.

If you deal with subdivisions, this is something you should know about moving forward.

Learn more