During last Friday’s town board retreat at the Renaissance Centre, Monica Sarna, the town’s stormwater engineering manager, took the commissioners and mayor through a lengthy description of how the town deals with the water that falls from rain, snow and ice.
Town Manager Kip Padgett introduced her by saying that the rain storms are becoming more intense here and everywhere and the town officials are now discussing a stormwater utility and fees that would pay for improvements mandated by the state and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Sarna restated what most of us know, that sediment is the number one pollutant in North Carolina streams, the red clay from construction sites and other sites that turn Smith Creek and Richland Creek orange and opaque. The town has the responsibility of assuring that any construction uses the right controls to keep the dirt onsite during any precipitation, but red clay is everywhere and easily finds its way to water.
Stormwater control is a large and complex subject because all that rain/snow/ice is not collected and treated like the wastewater in Raleigh’s sewer pipes. Some of it is collected from streets with the roadside drains and goes out into our streams through outfalls – and that includes all the oil, cigarette butts, fastfood wrappers and other junk in the street. In high density areas, like the downtown or apartment complexes, only 15 percent of the rain gets into the ground, as her PowerPoint presentation said.
“The state tells us how to manage our stormwater,” Sarna said. She added that it is an unfunded state mandate. The town is audited every five years to see how it is managing its stormwater.
But now EPA is telling the State of North Carolina it is not doing enough to manage stormwater, Sarna said. “We had plenty of warning. There are lots of things we need to do and do more.”
In 2015 the town did authorize and find funding for a study of 30 miles of Smith Creek and was able to correct enough problems to get it off the list of impaired waterways.
Sarna said the town has options in how it plans to meet the new requirements of its permit. It can use green infrastructure – overflow ponds with trees or water plants or the native plants that attract bees and butterflies the Neuse River Hawks planted around a retention pond in the Porto Fino – along with traditional methods or only traditional methods.
The engineering department will also have to monitor how dumpsters are cleaned.
The town has begun the process of determining whether, how and how to fund a stormwater utility by asking town residents their opinions about stormwater and its consequences last year.
There were 98 people who responded, the majority of them living in the Smith Creek watershed. To the question of their biggest concern about stormwater, 41 percent said flooding followed by erosion 20 percent, turbidity 13 percent and clogged drains 8 percent.
Seventy-six percent do not believe the town is adequately addressing erosion, 73 percent say the town is not adequately addressing flood protection, and 66 percent say the town is not adequately addressing turbidity, which is described as “. . . the cloudiness or haziness of water caused by large numbers of individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye, similar to smoke in air. The measurement of turbidity is a key test of water quality.
Over half the respondents, 59 percent, said the town has a stormwater utility fee, which it does not. However, the towns of Morrisville, Apex, Fuquay-Varina, Holly Springs and Wendell do, as does the City of Raleigh.
A criticality study has been done, town officials have discussed the idea of a stormwater utility fee and will further consider and refine it through 2023. By the winter of 2024 the plan calls for the program to be approved in the budget, a public education program will be unfurled in the spring of 2024 and it will be part of the 2024-2025 budget in June of 2024.
What we residents can expect about the fee?
** Businesses will have a different rate than homeowners.
** Homeowners can expect a typical fee of about $100 per year.
** The fee would be calculated based on the existing impervious surface in each parcel.
It has not been determined how the fee will be collected.
The money raised will pay for the staff budget for engineering, public works and GIS for work done on the stormwater utility, which will have to have its own budget charting how many projects it can complete in a year and the new equipment required, such as street sweepers, storm cameras, riprap and other items.
The result will be cleaner streams, fewer to no flooded streets and confidence that a long neglected part of the town infrastructure is being addressed.
###
November 5, 2024
Menu
3 Responses
No more fees. They are a hidden tax. They are regressive and adversely impact lower income property owners.
Let’s build the business case for stronger erosion and sediment control management with enforcement and place the expense in the annual budget. Make it balance and avoid tacking on fees that impact current property owners.
Of the 12 municipalities in Wake County, the property tax rate for Wake Forest is the 3rd highest.
“Stormwater utility and fees that would pay for improvements” will not repair the environmental damages caused by new development and the lack of enforcement of existing ordinances.
For example, since the onset of Siena townhouse development on Route 98 bypass, Pine View Estate and Tryst Lane residents have notified the town of substantial runoff damages. The ‘UDO stormwater management section 12’ and ‘Bass, Nixon & Kennedy engineering plan’ required NO stormwater runoff into adjoining property.
NO ONE at the town or state level enforced these requirements. NO ONE will assist us despite our many complaints. The developer was allowed to increase the topography by 11 feet, reduce the property buffer from 20 to 10 feet, improperly grade resulting in an unused skimmer basin, and not finish the retention pond which was then partially sold to WakeMed for their development. Our small neighborhood is the drainage basin for Siena Townhomes massive roofs. The water then ultimately flows into the Richland Creek watershed, untreated and full of our property topsoil.
American Rescue Plan funds were approved by the BOC to hire stormwater engineering contractors in 2022 for special projects. Isn’t that enough? Where are their recommendations for us? Why is the Siena development not being forced to use their retention pond for their stormwater runoff?
We need to change the policy that leaves it up to surrounding homeowners to enforce stormwater runoff regulations when a developer does not implement the approved building permits. This is the response we received from the town and state: “Any damage on private property would not fall to the Town to repair or remediate. It’s up to the homeowner to resolve via civil legal action.” Homeowners are expected to hire a lawyer, meanwhile the EPA is telling the town they are not doing enough?
There can be so much more to this report other than charging homeowners fees to pay for bad development that is allowed by the town.
What a timely article and so glad that the Town is finally looking at this. They need to be evaluating what additional controls and restriction they will put on developers especially in watershed areas.