You do not get to choose "dump it in the street" because it is convenient.

Huntsville's public storm system is an MS4. The city is under an ADEM stormwater permit. Illicit connections (pipes and drains that put the wrong water into the municipal system) are something the city is required to prohibit. A private French drain sneaked into a catch basin is not a weekend hack. It is a connection the Engineering Division can make you undo.

Huntsville Utilities is the water, sewer, and power utility. They are not the people who bless a backyard tie-in to a storm inlet. Storm and ditches sit with City Engineering. If you call HU because your yard is wet, you called the wrong building. Engineering is at City Hall, 305 Fountain Circle, 4th floor. 256-427-5300. Insp.Eng@HuntsvilleAL.gov. Hours 8 to 5 weekdays. Clogged city inlets and overgrown public ditches go through Huntsville Connect or that office. 911 if the street is a river and someone needs rescue.

Request a quote for the private-lot work. We do not pretend to be the city.

What a legal discharge looks like

1. Daylight on your own downhill grade, erosion controlled, not onto the neighbor.
2. A solid tight-line to a place the city recognizes, if they allow the connection and any permit is pulled.
3. A pump to a legal outfall when gravity will not do it.

What it does not look like

A soak pit in red clay. Clay does not perc. You have built a buried bathtub. After 55 inches of rain a year it stays a bathtub.

A pipe into the city's inlet with no conversation with Engineering.

A pipe under the fence onto Green Mountain's downslope lot.

Roof leaders dumped into a foundation drain so the first storm overwhelms the footing line.

Grading and land disturbance

The city's Storm Water Management Manual is the book. Grading permits cover excavation, clearing, filling, grading, and drainage-related work unless an exemption applies. Engineering reviews plans so new runoff does not dump extra volume on the next street. A small residential French drain is not a subdivision. A lot of dirt moving, a new outfall, or anything that changes how the block drains can stop being "just a trench." We will tell you if the scope looks like it needs Engineering before we dig.

Huntsville city vs Madison County

Inside the city, closed curb-and-gutter and inlets are common in newer subdivisions. In the county, you may have ditches and no inlet to dream about tying into. County Engineering still cares about flooding and runoff. Septic lots in clay already failed perc. Those lots do not get a magic soak pit either.

If the city's system is the problem

Stopped-up public ditch, missing grate, standing water in the street: Huntsville Connect. If a new development uphill sent mud into your lot, Engineering. If water is in the house tonight, 911 or police non-emergency 256-722-7100 for safety, then the form on this site for the private drain after.

Request a quote. We'll say daylight, pump, or "you need Engineering," not "we'll hide a pipe in the inlet."

Swap this to Chattanooga and the phone numbers, the MS4 office, Fountain Circle, and Huntsville Connect are wrong. That's the point.