By Alex Murray
As the frequency of severe storm events has increased in recent years, basement back-ups and combined sewer overflows have become a nagging problem to Chicago residents. In light of this issue, the EAF group has partnered with the Metropolitan Planning Council to investigate incentive-based solutions for green stormwater infrastructure on private property. Chicago is certainly not the first metropolitan area to encounter stormwater management issues. Many cities across the U.S. have attempted to address stormwater issues using private property through a variety of mechanisms, so one of our initial tasks has been to evaluate the success of existing incentive programs. Complementing the EAF group’s research this past spring, I had the opportunity to hear more about stormwater finance straight from policymakers at the Water Environmental Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference (WEFTEC) Stormwater Congress held at McCormick Place last week.
WEFTEC is held every other year in Chicago, but this year’s 86th gathering was particularly notable as Mayor Rahm Emmanuel used the meeting as a platform to announce the City of Chicago’s ambitious new green stormwater infrastructure investment. Through the “Green Stormwater Infrastructure Strategy, the City has pledged $50 million over five years in capital projects to hopefully allow an additional 10 million gallons of stormwater storage and reduce runoff by 250 million gallons per year”. In the wake of this significant announcement, I was interested to see how the policy panelists provide insight into the probable next steps, now that a plan has finally come to fruition.
After getting lost in the maze of churning demo tanks on the exhibition floor and happening across a plumbing design competition (the team names included some pretty bad puns), I located the “Stormwater Congress” portion of the conference. The “Stormwater Congress” featured sessions on stormwater management and policy development, aside from the engineering focus of the rest of the event. I attended a lecture titled “Stormwater Finance and Public Policy”. The first speaker, Elizabeth Treadway, a civil engineering consultant, spoke on the importance of assembling a supportive “cadre” of policymakers in order to get the stormwater financing project off the ground. In this group she includes the municipal comptroller, city attorneys, and civil engineers. As initiation of a fee-based stormwater utility requires an arduous number of policy decisions, a weak link in the planning process can considerably set a project backwards. Ultimately she recommends putting together an advisory group of businesses, non-profits (schools, hospitals) and flooding victims to form an administrative constituency that can inform the needs of the project.
Moving from theory to action, Mikelle Adgate, Green Infrastructure Project Manager at the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) provided a case study of the successful incentive-based program for private stormwater management in NYC. Stemming from a commitment similar to the new Chicago green infrastructure (GI) plan, the 2010 NYC GI Plan pledged to manage the first 1” of storm runoff from 10% of all impervious surface in the city by 2030 with a budget of $730 million. The private incentive program, the smallest component of this initiative, allows private partners to seek reimbursement for mitigation of runoff through green infrastructure. This program particularly targets large institutions like the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which installed an impressive 1-acre rooftop farm. An interesting facet of the NYC program is the twenty-year restrictive covenant that all private partners are required to sign in advance of any reimbursement of project costs. This covenant includes filing quarterly maintenance reports for the first three years and maintaining all green infrastructure features for twenty years. The NYC DEP hopes to build durable private partnerships by working alongside large institutions that have longevity and are willing to commit to green infrastructure over the long haul. By partnering with large local institutions (like the Brooklyn Navy Yard), the DEP also hopes to achieve the benefit of community enrichment and education.
Source: Nona Brooklyn
Next, a speaker from Water Environment Foundation (WEF) summarized the findings of a new manual published by WEF about “User-Fee Funded Stormwater Utilities”. This model is particularly attractive from a policy standpoint because there is shared risk and community-wide investment in stormwater management. The new WEF manual includes case studies on credit systems and fee rebates ranging from Portland, OR (the oldest program in the country, founded in 1977) to a number of programs in the Chesapeake Bay area. Going forward this seems like it will be a valuable resource as many Chicago suburbs have also developed user-fee based stormwater utilities in recent years. Based on the feel of this conference and the Mayor’s announcement, green infrastructure for stormwater has been made a priority in Chicago and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes!