The professor in my Environmental Laws and Regulations class offered the students the opportunity to perform an extra credit project. The project was fairly loosely defined by the Prof and the only real parameter was that it had to pertain to the class in some way. Easy enough.

To me, the offering of extra credit in a college class is like being offered a matching contribution in my stock purchase plan. To not take them up on the offer of free points, or money, would be ludicrous!

It took me a while to get my arms around my concept because I tend to think REALLY big picture, but in the end, I narrowed my focus to the following premise:

Could you live off-grid and truly remove ‘The Man’ from your life?

Trying to answer this question took me down several rabbit holes, to say the least.

Say you buy some rural land and want to have your own little homestead. What will you need to make life somewhat tolerable? Well, to me, I went with water and electricity (in some form). Here’s the final slide where I finished defining all of the concepts a person might consider implementing on their homestead:

A big concept in the environmental space is the ‘Permit to Install’ (PTI) and ‘Permit to Install and Operate’ (PTIO). So in an effort to tie the concepts that I’d just outlined back to the curriculum, I asked the students if any of the proposed installs would require a PTI or PTIO.

Oh, and incidentally, if you are thinking about incorporating a wind turbine, the Ohio Anemometer Loan Program (ALP) allows qualified applicants to borrow all necessary equipment to conduct a wind study, including a temporary meteorological tower, data logger, and instrumentation. Green Energy Ohio will provide study services, such as site inspection, equipment installation, data validation, and program management at no cost.

Now, in an effort to answer the PTI/PTIO question for the presentation, I called down to Vinton County, Ohio and started asking questions. The selection of Vinton County was not by happenstance either. It happens to be where the bulk of the Foreign and Domestic book series takes place. Incidentally, I also called the Ohio EPA (OEPA) and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Vinton County had some interesting responses.

In a nutshell. if I am building anything outside of the city limits of McArthur, Ohio, I can pretty much do whatever I want with the exception of the well and the septic systems. Those were the only two items on my list where the county required a PTI. However, they said that, while they had no real jurisdiction over these, I would definitely need to call either OEPA or the USACE for the hydro-electric, fuel storage, and the wetland portion of the pond/wetland concept.

Damn! I was so close!

When I called the USACE and explained the hydro-electric project, they immediately sat up. When they realized it was a tiny turbine I was proposing to generate some electricity for a shop or outbuilding, they sat back down. Once they fully understood, they said all they’d really care about is the splash pad where the discharged water re-entered the surface water. They would want to see the erosion controls measure implemented.

That’s it? Sweet.

Here’s the slide explaining all of that.

Fuel Storage is highly regulated in the state of Ohio, just like anywhere else in the states I’d imagine. If you have to have fuel on-site, you’ll choose between either underground fuel storage (UST) or above ground fuel storage (AST). From a regulatory standpoint, choose UST. Apparently, the OEPA and USEPA get real jumpy with AST due to the heightened risk of massive explosions. Therefore, it is regulated more heavily than UST. But… there’s always a but… you can remove the OEPA, Fire Marshall, and a whole host of other regulations if you keep the containers under the minimum threshold of 1,100 gallons.

You’ll definitely need a PTI for the fuel storage concept.

The last concept, which I also spoke to both the OEPA and the USACE about, was the pond/wetland idea. Both of these regulatory bodies got real curious about my ideas for ponds and wetlands. I couldn’t help but think that while I was talking to them I was playing a really annoying game of ‘what-if’ with them as if I were a toddler interacting with their parents.

Once I got them nailed down on my ideas, the said some interesting things. First, they’d want to see the splash pad for the overflow discharge pipe. Second, the minute any acreage is designated as a ‘wetland’, regardless of whether it was there beforehand or I built it from scratch, I would have to, at a minimum, have the wetland restriction deeded into my property.

I personally concluded that I would avoid the incorporation of a designated wetland. That’s a can of worms no one needs on their property.

In the end, though, all of the government agencies I contacted basically said the same thing. If you let us know what you’re planning beforehand, we can tell how to avoid on-going governance from a regulating body.

Just like extra credit, that’s advice I’d willingly take.