Wisconsin Town Creates Storm Water Utility

The Village of Sussex, Wis., Board created a new storm water utility earlier this month to reduce pollution and erosion in and around the village's waterways-mostly Sussex Creek.

According to a story in the Sussex, Sun, the utility will help Sussex comply with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) regulations NR 216 and 151, which it established to administer parts of the federal Environmental Protection Act.

Those regulations require Sussex to reduce pollutants and sediment entering the village's waterways 20% by 2008 and 40% by 2014.

To finance the utility's capital and operating expenses, the board voted to impose a $5-per-month charge on homeowners, billed quarterly with the village's water and sewer charges.

Unlike those utilities, however, the new utility will be governed by the Village Board, not by its own commission.

The ordinance will also charge businesses and institutions $5 a month for each equivalent runoff unit (ERU)-or 3,897 square feet of impervious surface-based on the average impervious area of a residential property, according to Earth Tech company engineers, the village's consultants.

Organizations exempt from property tax-such as schools, charities and other nonprofits, including the village itself-will have to pay that charge.

That non-exemption was one of the reasons the board created the utility, Village Trustee Roger Johnson explained during the public hearing that preceded the board meeting.

The village will measure the impervious surface of every business and institution in Sussex and charge each one proportionately.

A business property with 4,300 sq ft of impervious surface, for example, would pay $5.50 per month for 1.1 ERU. (Village-owned sidewalks and driveway approaches will not be included).

The village expects to spend $158,000 on storm water projects next year, and as much as $234,000 by 2010, based on what the board heard from Earth Tech senior engineer Chuck Boehm in October.

That's what it will take to create new detention ponds and enlarge existing ones, he said, and to create and maintain wetlands to filter some of the storm water runoff before it reaches the village's streams.

Source: SS