Stormwater Management in Anne Arundel County

Stream Restoration at the head of Whitehall Creek. A taste of the future.

Stormwater is in the news this year. The County Council has stepped up (with legislative prodding from the State) and made a serious attempt to address the sins of our development history. Legislation was passed and was implemented July 1st, 2013 to address runoff problems from past development practices that have not served our waterways well.

The county has a backlog of 1.2 billion+ dollars of projects to control stormwater runoff. Runoff from all over the county makes its way into streams and rivers and eventually the Bay. Sediment, nitrogen, and phosphorous chokes the plant and animal life in the waters of our region. Catching and treating this runoff is the purpose of the new stormwater tax.

The fees assessed on property owners are designed to be administered in a manageable way. So an average of the impermeable surface found on small ($35), medium ($85) and large ($170) residential properties is used to set the fees. These fees are very similar to those of other large developed counties that have implemented a serious effort. These fees will be collected as a line item on your property tax bill. Business properties are charged a fee based on actual square footage of their impermeable surface, with a cap of 25% of their property tax. There are heavy discounts to the fees for churches and non-profits. Some credits will be offered for those who make certain stormwater management improvements on their property (but will not be greater than 50% reductions). These discounts and caps have resulted in a reduction of 14% of the expected revenue, and the amounts will be phased in over the next 3 years. So we are off to a slow start. The plan is to raise a sum of about 800+ million dollars over the next 22 years and use the stormwater fees to repay the bonds. About 75% of this money will end up “in the ground”, with the remaining going to management and interest repayment. We expect the Broadneck to receive a meaningful portion of these funds to help secure our extensive shoreline.

County Executive Laura Neuman has been holding a series of listening sessions and presentations describing the plan. The plan addresses each of the approximately 400 sub-watersheds within the county using a number of different techniques, most of which are relatively recent modifications to improve on older techniques that had shortcomings. Smaller and less expensive projects in older communities will come first. Stream restoration projects are to be some of the final steps because of permitting difficulties and the larger expense involved.

Ms. Neuman’s comments show that she is not happy with the legislation or the fees. While she acknowledges the need for the projects and Bay protection, she is not able at this point to suggest an alternative viable way to pay for them, other than suggesting money should come from the state and federal governments before we do anything.

The Annapolis listening session found almost all community members attending were in support of the stormwater clean up and a reasonable method for paying the costs. Ms. Neuman said she found a large majority of those attending the presentation in other parts of the county to be opposed.

Discussions with our County Councilman, Dick Ladd, suggests there is still a four member majority for retaining the Stormwater fees, even if Ms. Neuman, or the recently reinstated North County District 1 Democrat Daryl Jones, propose legislation to rescind the law.

April Update: The latest State Legislative session is done and lots of noise was made about modifying or repealing the State requirements for paying for stormwater management. None of these passed. So Counties will now have an opportunity to work on implementation of runoff containment and reduction.