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Budget constraints eliminate stormwater service requests
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 12:00am
Metro Water recently began sending letters telling residents requesting stormwater repairs that funds are not available. Matthew Williams/The City Paper
Davidson County residents and business owners seeking stormwater repairs for their property are being sent letters stating there is no money to pay for such service requests.
Earlier this year Metro Water Services released a study stating a new user fee would be required to pay for the approximately $86 million in necessary stormwater projects.
As of August, there were 1,958 stormwater service requests backlogged, according to Metro Water public information officer Sonia Harvat.
That number will grow, according to the department letter, as funding continues to experience a shortfall.
“Please understand at this current time there are no construction projects being done by this department due to lack of funding,” a Metro Water letter to a resident stated. “The complaint that you are registering with us will be placed in our database to be addressed by a project in the future.”
The stormwater division currently operates with a budget of about $12.8 million. The study said about $26 million was needed annually to handle the backlog of projects.
In order to get there, the study called for residential properties with under 2,000 square feet of impervious area to pay $2.49 monthly. Larger residential and non-residential properties would pay $4.98 per 3,200 square feet of impervious area.
Mayor Karl Dean said earlier this year that water, sewer and stormwater reform was necessary. He said all things were on the table, including raising water and sewer rate increases and the stormwater fee.
If and when the stormwater fee is in place, according to the letter, it may be some time before service requests are answered.
“Once funding is finally received, it will possibly be years before some complaints will be addressed,” the letter said.
Stormwater was operated by Metro Public Works until 2002. That’s when the division was moved to Metro Water, but no additional funding was added to the department.
All but just under $1 million of the division’s current budget goes to necessary repairs, Harvat said.
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Filed under: City News
If you could see the project they did at a piece of property I own, it would be apparent why there is no money. Thousands had to be spent on that 1 project and due to engineering, it is no better than before they started.There was 12 loads of dirt hauled out of the yard (2 crew members said "1 of the owners brother-in-law needed fill dirt on his property near by". Then replaced with dirt that won't even grow grass.They spent months, buckets of money and the only thing accomplished, the brother-in-law got his property improved.For all the good they do, this dept. needs to be abolished!
This is the elephant in the room that no one talks about. Jefferson County Alabama is facing bankruptcy due to the same federal stormwater guidelines that Metro faces. Atlanta and the Great Lake cities each face requirements that will run in the BILLIONS for each city. That is billions for each city, not all together.Nashville has to face an expectation of being required to enact a real Public Works driven stormwater program that will run in the hundreds of millions. This will require a ramp up in bonded debt. Unfortunately our "leaders" are more concerned with the trivial project that the downtown tourism business interests keep wanting to build on someone else's dime (or debt limit).Moving stormwater to the Metro Water department was just a stopgap to put off the impending requirements for a few more years. Now the required fixes will cost us more at a time when we have less capacity for paying for it. Wouldn't it be nice to use tourism capture taxes for something necessary for all of Nashville instead of something irresponsible and inconsequential and beneficial to so few?
The ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM is the pure and simple fact that the largest contributors to stormwater violations are parking lots!!! There are no measures currently in place for most of the parking lots downtown, and all of the polluted runoff goes directly into our system untreated. Even if you raise those fees and rates, the greatest violators in our city will STILL not pay into the coffers. Only newly constructed sites have drainage ditches and other measures in place to prevent the pollution from entering (eventually) our water supply. Those fines the Feds have been levying will only continue, if not increase, until major industrial sites, commercial sites, and parking lots are addressed.
Yet again, the rest of us have to deal with problems like flooding, property damage, and lower land values because conservatives keep whining about our supposedly high taxes.God forbid that we invest in modern infrastructure that benefits actual people instead of big business.As usual, everyone pays because of the Republicans' screw-ups. Way to go, Cons. Good thing you'll be drummed out of Washington in November.
morpheus, you are really stretching by blaming conservatives in a city with a vastly Democratic voting record. Conservatives won a property tax vote but the city is still run by the silly little Decmocratic women wearing hats, the "community activist" intent on NIMBY blockades, and lawyers yearning to be the next Democratic governor or senator. Nashville's problem are self-inflicted Democratic problems. Nashville will have to do what hundreds of other communities have done and assess stormwater fees based on impervious surface area with credits given to properties with on-site stormwater treatment methods. Right now the people paying are property tax owners irregardless of the properties absorptive or polluting capabilities.
First, there's no such word as irregardless.Second, Nashville is still utilizing a 100+ year old water and sewer system that combines storm water with the sanitary sewer and sends it all to the sewage treatment plants. When we get a significant rain event, the treatment plants can't handle all the volume of sewage plus stormwater, resulting in untreated effluent being discahrged into the Cumberland. Hence, our continuing fines by the EPA.Third, to correct this problem, a massive infrastructure project is necessary. This project should replace our very aged sewer system, and as much as is possible, separate storm water from sewer lines by installing redundant lines throughout downtown and the older sections of east and west Nashville. Another way to reduce stormwater runoff is to insist on pervious surfaces whereever possible. There are now both pervious concrete and asphalt products that allow rainwater to pass through them to the ground below rather than running off into a sewer or stormwater system.Finally, as far as I can tell, the only thing the city has done to reduce the amount of effluent entering the Cumberland is to build a larger treatment plant or two. To me, that's not solving the problem, it's only delaying the day the city and it's citizens will need to address the real issue - and spend millions of dollars doing it.
Only downtown has a combined system, that is the reason the price tag is not as high here as it is in Cleveland and Atlanta. Atlanta at one time figured to deal with the problem by storing all sewer in massive new tunnels until treatment capacity catches up after rain stops. The federal government simply requires that all water entering a sewer system be treated before discharge. Cities can do this by either increasing capacity of the system to handle all sanitary and stormwater sewer in the system or by minimizing the stormwater runoff from making it into the system (the use of pervious materials or building separate systems). Nashville can either build larger treatment facilities or go about building regional stormwater retention systems that get the job done by building runoff basins that leach untreated runoff into groundwater, filtering it through the soil or by drainage to streams. The streams and groundwater would have to be further protected by methods such as increased street sweeping and construction area topsoil retention.
I would recommend that people look into the the grass pave systems that allow construction of vehicle areas that rest on reinforced grass growing acreage. I saw this system in place at the Orange Bowl several years ago and wondered why no one though to use that in the parking lots around Adelphia Coliseum(at the time). It will not support constant week-long traffic but it more than meets the needs of a twice-a-week parking structure or even overflow parking for airports and shopping centers.