Stormwater Utilities Services

These utilities will be levying fees to owners of properties with the purpose of funding local stormwater infrastructure to meet unfunded requirements of EPA municipal stormwater permits. The fees will be based on the property’s impervious area which is: rooftops, parking lots, and other hard surfaces that prohibit water from soaking into the ground. Each municipality will have credit programs in place to allow property owners the ability to reduce their fee in exchange for actions they take to remove pollutants from their stormwater.

Both residents and business owners alike will be subject to the fee. The more impervious area on a property, the greater the fee. While this may result in over a hundred dollars per year for larger residential properties in some municipalities, it could be in the tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for some businesses. At currently projected rates, a business in Baltimore City that has approximately 33 acres of impervious area will be charged an annual fee in the range of $100,000.

With this much money involved it is essential that business owners understand what is happening as municipalities develop their programs. Important considerations for property owners include:

• Fee Determination: Are all fee payers being charged the same rate based a simple square foot on impervious area basis?  With thousands of properties being charged, fee determination for various properties is complex and difficult to reduce to such simple terms.  Get to know the term “ERU, which stands for “Equivalent Residential Unit”.  This is a way of applying typical residential property rates to larger non-residential properties and is the key to compare fee rates.  Municipalities are taking differing approaches based on their individual situations and guidance from their staff and consultants.  
• Exemptions:  Should a property be subject to the fee at all? Right now, government properties (local, state, and federal) are exempt, which some do not agree with.  But some industrial property owners that have separate EPA NPDES permits (with similar requirements and costs of the municipal permits) feel that if they are charged the full utility fee, they would be doubling their fair share.  Moreover, some non-profits, such as faith organizations (often with large impervious areas and low budgets), feel they should be exempt due to their admirable missions and other contributions to the communities they serve.
• Verification:  Will property owners have the chance to verify that the determination of their impervious area is correct before paying the first fee installment?  If they feel it is wrong, how do they have it corrected?  Municipalities are challenged with establishing and staffing verification and credit review programs to respond to property owners’ requests for fee verification and credit qualification.