Stormwater charge to appear on February bills

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

Water and sewer customers for the city of Fayetteville will notice a slight bump on their February water and sewer bills thanks to the creation of a new stormwater utility to handle maintenance and improvement of stormwater infrastructure.

Individual homes will be charged a flat rate of $2.95 per month for the stormwater program. The feel for all other properties, however, will likely run significantly higher because the tab will be calculated based on the total square footage of impervious surface on site.

Preliminary estimates indicate the city will raise roughly $1 million a year from the stormwater fee, said City Engineer Don Easterbrook. Before a final number can be reached, however, the square footage calculations for non-residential properties must be firmed up, Easterbrook added.

To help with flood control, the city has already undertaken several stormwater improvement projects. The level of Lake Pye has been lowered as a stopgap measure while the city studys the feasibility of using the now-privately owned lake for flood control. State officials have determined the lake’s dam needs significant repair which the owner has said she cannot afford to fix.

Also, the city’s water and sewer and public works crews have engaged in cleaning up stormwater channels in the East Fayetteville basin area to help keep them free of obstructions.

Crews even found a storage shed blocking the flow of one creek, officials said.

For a household using 7,500 gallons of water a month, the combined water/sewer bill is $44.28, so the additional $2.95 a month fee for stormwater represents a 6.6 percent increase. Households using 15,000 gallons of water would accrue a bill of $74.65, and the stormwater fee would affect a 3.9 percent increase on that bill.

Ellen Jones, assistant director of finance and administrative services for the city, said there are roughly 5,000 residential water and sewer customers in the city of Fayetteville. There are approximately 1,000 non-residential customers also on the system, she said.