Taking a New Look at Stormwater

By James Laughlin

The water treatment industry has done a great job over the past few decades cleaning up point sources of pollution. Although expensive, that job was easy when compared to the next challenge, dealing with non-point source pollution.

In an urban environment, stormwater runoff is the major culprit, washing pollutants from city streets, parking lots, industrial sites and even neighborhood lawns into a region's streams and rivers.

The traditional approach to stormwater has been to collect rainfall runoff in storm sewers and channel it away from developed areas and into local streams. While reasonably effective in preventing localized flooding, the process tends to concentrate pollutants and mainline them into the environment.

A new report from the Reason Public Policy Institute looks at incentive-based stormwater funding mechanisms that can be used to finance more creative and effective means of managing stormwater.

In the report, Preparing for the Storm: Preserving Water Resources with Stormwater Utilities, ecologist Barrett Walker examines how market-based user fees can promote development with minimal environmental impact - an approach already adopted by a growing number of communities around the United States.

"Traditional approaches to stormwater management make it more difficult to protect water resources, treating runoff as an event to be managed rather than a resource," Walker said.

The report provides an in-depth look at two successful stormwater programs. Bellevue, WA, which established one of the first stormwater utilities in the nation, demonstrates that designing "with nature" can reduce the negative impact of impervious surfaces on aquatic systems, while creating highly desirable neighborhoods. Charlotte, NC, shows that stormwater controls can be retrofitted to already developed neighborhoods through bioengineering of retention ponds and other steps such as stream-habitat improvements.

To help fund such improvements, Walker recommends the adoption of market-based stormwater utilities, with user fees based on the level of environmental impact caused by a development. These fees can be based on criteria such as the amount of impermeable surfaces, which could encourage development that minimizes environmental impacts.

He notes that these modified fee structures can make communities more livable and improve property values by paying for superior pollution control, on-site flood control, and the protection of sensitive natural areas and wildlife.

"There is no simple answer to the complex trade-offs between economic growth, urban development, and resource conservation. However, unlike current funding of fragmented water utilities through tax revenue, market-based user fees can be an effective source of environmental protection by creating incentives to minimize harmful impacts and maintain development within the resource capacity of a given watershed," Walker said.

New federal requirements for stormwater permits affecting smaller cities and court-mandated enforcement of the Clean Water Act on a watershed basis are spurring many municipalities to consider the user-fee concept for dedicated funding of improved stormwater management. Over 350 stormwater utilities have been formed nationwide, most in the last decade.

Reason Public Policy Institute is a national policy research organization that promotes market- and incentive-based environmental policy. The organization conducts academic, peer-reviewed research into the fields of environmental policy, land use, transportation and infrastructure, privatization and government reform, and education and child welfare.

Copies of Preparing for the Storm: Preserving Water Resources with Stormwater Utilities (Policy Study 275) are available for $15 by calling 310-391-2245 or may be accessed free of charge on the RPPI Web site at http://www.rppi.org/ps275central.html