The rule
The Municipality of Anchorage regulates grading, excavation and fill under Anchorage Municipal Code Title 23.105, administered by Development Services. Its purpose is drainage and stability: fill placed on a lot changes where water goes, and Anchorage has enough creeks, wetlands and shallow groundwater that a hundred yards in the wrong place ends up in someone else's crawl space. The code sets thresholds for how much material can be moved without a permit, exemptions for ordinary landscaping and for work done under a building permit, and stricter handling for anything near a drainage, a wetland or a slope. Read the ordinance itself for the current numbers, or call Development Services; we are haulers, not the permit desk, and the thresholds are theirs to state.
When it usually applies
- Raising a lot with fill, especially more than a nominal depth or volume.
- Building a pad for a shop, a garage or an RV.
- Cutting into or filling on a slope, particularly Hillside lots.
- Anything within or adjacent to a mapped wetland or a stream setback.
- Changing where surface water leaves your lot, even by accident.
When it usually does not
- Topping a driveway on its existing footprint.
- Ordinary landscaping: a few yards of topsoil, a garden bed, a small path.
- Work already covered by an active building permit that includes the grading plan.
Wetlands and drainages
Much of the Anchorage Bowl west of the Seward Highway and around the creeks is mapped wetland, and filling wetland can involve the Corps of Engineers as well as the Municipality. Development Services can tell you if your lot is mapped. If it is, the permit question is not whether but how, and it is worth having the answer before you order material, not after the pile is on the ground.
What the permit process looks like
For most residential fill jobs: a site plan showing where the fill goes and how water drains after, the volume, the source of the material, and erosion control if there is a slope or a ditch. The material matters: clean fill, meaning sand or gravelly soil with no organics, is what a grading permit expects; peat and stripped organics are not fill, they are what fill replaces. The topsoil and fill page covers what qualifies. Inspections may follow, and the pit tickets we hand you are how you show what went in.
Digging: a separate rule
If your project also digs, Alaska law requires a locate request through Alaska 811 at least two business days before excavation, no exceptions, and the excavator holds that responsibility. A fill permit does not cover it and neither does a building permit. Locates are free for the first request.
What happens if you skip it
A stop-work order, a requirement to submit the plan you should have submitted, and in the cases that go badly, an order to remove the fill and restore the drainage. Removal is a haul-off job, which we also do, and it is the least satisfying work we get: paying twice to move the same dirt, once in and once out.
Questions we get about this
How many yards can I bring in without a permit?
The ordinance sets the thresholds and they depend on depth, location and whether a building permit already covers the work. Read Title 23.105 or call Development Services with your address; we will not quote a number that the Municipality should quote.
Does the hauler pull the permit?
No. The property owner or the contractor doing the grading holds the permit. We haul the material and give you the tickets that document it.
What about Eagle River and Chugiak?
Inside the Municipality, so the same code applies. The Mat-Su Borough has its own rules for Wasilla and Palmer lots.
Is topsoil "fill"?
For a lawn, a few inches of topsoil is landscaping. A foot of it raising a lot is fill in the code's eyes, and it is the wrong material for that anyway.