Ashgrove's Stormwater Fee: Paying for the Rain That Runs Off

Rain that falls on a city has to go somewhere. In most cities, much of the ground is covered by hard surfaces that do not let water soak in. Roofs, roads, driveways, and parking lots shed water almost as soon as it lands. During a storm, the rain runs off these surfaces quickly and rushes into storm drains and underground pipes.

In many older cities, those pipes carry storm runoff and household sewage together in a single system. On a dry day the system works as designed, carrying all of the sewage to a treatment plant where it is cleaned. During a heavy storm, however, the added rainwater can fill the pipes past their limit. When that happens, the mixture of rainwater and untreated sewage spills out through overflow outlets into the nearest river, an event known as a combined sewer overflow. These overflows pollute the same rivers that people live beside, fish in, and paddle on.

The city of Ashgrove faced this problem for years. Its downtown was mostly pavement, and after large storms its river turned cloudy and became unsafe for swimming or fishing. City leaders saw two broad choices. They could build larger pipes and underground tanks that would hold the extra water until the treatment plant could handle it, or they could reduce how much rain ran off the land in the first place.

Ashgrove decided to do both, while relying heavily on a newer approach called green infrastructure. Green infrastructure uses plants and soil to soak up rain close to where it falls. A rain garden, for example, is a shallow planted basin that collects runoff from a roof or a street and lets it sink slowly into the ground. Permeable pavement looks much like ordinary pavement, but it contains tiny gaps that allow water to pass through to the soil below. Planted strips along roads catch water that would otherwise flow quickly toward the drains. Each of these features keeps some rain out of the pipes, which leaves more room in the system during a storm.

To pay for this work, Ashgrove created a stormwater fee. The fee was not the same for every property, because it was based on how much hard surface each property had. A small house with a small roof paid a low fee, while a large store with a wide parking lot paid considerably more. City officials explained the reasoning behind this design: a property with more pavement sends more runoff into the system, so it places a bigger load on the pipes.

Not everyone agreed that the fee was a good idea. Some business owners argued that it was unfair to charge them more, since rain is no one's fault and no property owner can control the weather. Other residents said the fee was fair for exactly the reason the city gave. A large parking lot really does create more runoff than a small yard, they pointed out, and the people whose land causes the most load should pay the most to manage it.

The fee also gave property owners a way to lower their bills. If an owner added a rain garden or replaced some ordinary pavement with permeable pavement, less water ran off that property, and Ashgrove reduced the fee to match. In this way, the fee did more than raise money. It also gave people a reason to change how their land handled rain, which meant the city did not have to build every solution on public land by itself.

Over the following years, Ashgrove's approach spread across the city. Several schools added rain gardens to their grounds, and a shopping center replaced part of its parking lot with permeable pavement. Each change was small on its own, yet together the changes added up. Less runoff reached the pipes during storms, and the river overflowed less often. Ashgrove's experience shows how a local government can combine green infrastructure with a carefully designed fee to address a problem that everyone in the city shares.

1. According to the passage, what is a combined sewer overflow?
2. On what was Ashgrove's stormwater fee based?
3. Name two features of green infrastructure described in the passage.
4. Why did a large store with a wide parking lot pay a higher fee than a small house? Cite the detail from the passage that most strongly supports your answer.
5. The passage says the fee "did more than raise money." Explain what else the fee did and how it did it.
6. Some business owners called the fee unfair, while others called it fair. Using the passage, explain the strongest reason on each side.