Stormwater utility creation solution for city flooding?

Adopting a resolution approving a stormwater planning study is the first step toward what might result in creation of a stormwater utility for the City of Greencastle.

The City Council passed Resolution 2018-19 unanimously at its December meeting to comply with requirements of a $35,000 Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs (IOCRA) grant to help fund a study by Christopher B. Burke Engineering LLC to define and describe issues, advise the city of options and make recommendations to address Greencastle stormwater issues in the near future.

Overall, a committee comprised of department heads, city representatives, DePauw representatives and others identified 19 areas of poor drainage or standing water, areas of actual stormwater flow, areas of infiltration inflow problems, areas with infrastructure that’s old or in need of repair or replacement and some with stream bank erosion.

“What the committee did,” Christopher B. Burke’s Director of Planning Sheila McKinley said, “was we broke that down into nine priority areas, and those totaled about $2.1 million in construction and implementation costs.”

Those suggested locations include:

-- The National Guard Armory, where with some drainage issues at hand, there is opportunity under the parking lot, McKinney said, for stormwater storage, “so the neighborhood around the armory doesn’t cause flooding there.”

-- Fillmore Road where there are flooding issues and infrastructure needs.

-- The Avenues neighborhood, “where maybe curb and gutter would certainly benefit.”

-- The Indianapolis Road-Percy Julian Drive intersection.

-- Also, the Eagle Valley Subdivision, Walnut Street, College Avenue, Cassida Drive and Paradise Lane.

“A couple recommendations came out of the plan,” McKinley said. “One, there’s a need to update the stormwater ordinance so that any development that occurs now meets higher standards for water quality and quantity, so controlling that volume of runoff and also managing that water quality from there as well. Also, to prepare a citywide stormwater master plan or capital project plan.

“So what we did with this committee was to identify known problem areas,” she continued. “What the stormwater master plan will do is look at those as well but then look a little bit more holistically at the whole city and look at the drainage area and look at future growth and how that will impact it, and make sure that your infrastructure is sized accordingly, and then put together a list of capital projects.”

The project’s benefits would be reducing flooding and improving water quality.

The idea is far from a new one, McKinley said.

“Like many Indiana communities, the City of Greencastle is faced with a challenge of paying for increased costs of ongoing maintenance and improvement to existing drainage infrastructure and then complying with state and federal requirements,” she noted. “Currently this is all paid for through the general fund and competes with everything else the general fund needs to pay for.

“So the committee talked about the possibility of moving forward with a stormwater utility,” McKinley said. “That is a fee, and it’s a fee that’s assessed to properties based on impervious cover because that’s what prevents stormwater from infiltrating into the ground.”

Impervious cover, she noted, allows stormwater to pick up pollutants as it flows along and then discharges all that into the public stormwater infrastructure.

“To be clear,” Council President Adam Cohen interjected, “you mean like cement? Things that don’t allow water to seep in.”

Yes, she said, specifying asphalt, rooftops, driveways, sidewalks, and even gravel when it becomes so compacted that it gets to be impervious as well.

“Anything that doesn’t let the water infiltrate into the ground,” McKinley said.

She further explained that a stormwater utility is a dedicated funding source, of which the city would only be able to use its funds for stormwater-related projects.

“It’s provided through a user fee,” she said, “based on square footage of impervious surface.”

McKinley reminded the Council and its audience, however, that “nothing has been decided yet, all of these are just recommendations.”

Cohen turned to Mayor Bill Dory to ask what the cost might be for the average homeowner if a stormwater utility were created.

That’s jumping the gun a bit, Dory suggested.

“We have several more steps after this step,” the mayor said, “so the thought was we’d probably have a meeting after the first of the year where Sheila (McKinley) would come out and the meeting would just be to explain how the funding mechanism works, how the rate structures work and things like that. Because what I don’t want to do is throw out a number here, and after that discussion the Council decides maybe we should look at this in a little different way. So I don’t want to scare people tonight.”

Cohen agreed.

“I guess what I was getting at,” he said, “was when I first heard the numbers (not yet made public), I thought these are not huge numbers for the average homeowner.”

“For the average homeowner, it should be pretty reasonable,” the mayor replied.

“That’s what I was trying to assure people,” Cohen responded.

One possible scenario would be a flat fee for all residential users and a fee based on square footage for non-residential users.

“Water is a finite source,” McKinley reasoned. “We’re drinking the same water as the dinosaurs, right? There’s only so much and the more we can do to improve it, the better off we are for future generations.”

Mayor Dory said he expects to host an informal open house at City Hall in the near future so the public can check out the maps identifying the areas in need and offer input into other possible locations.

He also envisions a workshop with the City Council and Board of Works members and a meeting with representatives of local industries, the schools and DePauw about the stormwater issue.

After that, the Council will need to make a decision on whether or not to establish a stormwater utility (which would likely function through the Water and Wastewater departments already in place to avoid any need for personnel additions) and establish rates.

“This is just kind of the first step,” Dory stressed. ”We’ll keep moving forward in the next year.”