In recent years cities have been changing the way they deal with hard rains. For quite some time they used gutters and pipes to send stormwater off to their sewage systems; later many of them set up separate stormwater arrangements that carried storm runoff to local streams or ponds; and, lately, some cities have been building rain gardens and other physical structures that let rain settle into the ground close to where it falls, thereby reducing runoff.
Whatever the approach, these stormwater management systems are being taxed in serious ways by the mounting frequency of heavy downpours – a consequence of climate instability.
A consequence is that cities, with their vast expanses of impermeable surfaces such as sidewalks, streets and parking lots, are finding that they have to spend big money to redesign or upgrade their stormwater infrastructure.
The question is: who’s to pay for those changes?
Should all residents share equally in the cost, or should the costs of these capital projects fall more heavily on people whose properties cause more runoff than others – say, shopping centers with acres of parking lots, or homeowners with more impermeable surfaces than others?
The answer in Houston is “both.”
Voters there recently approved a $2.5 billion bond to make the area more flood-safe, and the city also levies a stormwater fee on property-owners based on size of their lots – at 0.032 cents per square foot. That can come to more than a few hundred dollars per year per homeowner, and about $125 million per year in total receipts.
The generic term for that fee is a stormwater utility fee. The concept is similar to that of water fees or sewage fees, which customarily are based on usage. In the case of stormwater utility fees, the charge is based on how much water your property sends into the city’s network of gutters, pipes and other infrastructure.
Not everyone is a fan of stormwater utility fees. Not long ago critics in Maryland lambasted enabling legislation in that state as a “rain tax.”
Closer to where I live in New Hampshire, the small coastal city of Dover – which has won widespread recognition for its innovations in stormwater management – experienced a case where critics of a proposed stormwater utility successfully blocked the plan in an anti-tax move.
But other parts of the country have been more receptive to charging separately to cover runoff-control expenses.
Meanwhile, cities are changing how they regard rain runoff. It’s not just flood control any more. It’s worries about pollution, because it’s widely accepted today that most pollution of local streams and ponds doesn’t come from the usual suspects of the past – factories, leaking septic tanks, and so on – but rather rain runoff as its picks up crud on the surface of the land before being shunted to local water bodies.
So, that means dealing with hard rains in new ways; stormwater utilities are a way to generate funds to design and implement those ways.