By the Numbers
17.5: Miles of stormwater lines that need to be updated in Urbana.
$4.50: Highest monthly stormwater fee in Springfield.
$4.1 Million: Money collected from Springfield’s stormwater utility.
The Urbana City Council have taken the first steps toward charging residents for a new utility fee, joining cities across the region grappling with the costs of updating aging stormwater and sewer systems.
Urbana has established a Stormwater Advisory Committee, which will work with city staff members in developing a recommendation to council by Nov. 30 on whether or not to set up a stormwater utility.
The city wants public input in the decision, City Engineer Tyler Bumbalough said.
The committee hasn’t been finalized, but will include Bumbalough, volunteers from the community, at least one city council member and Wastewater Superintendent Chad Hall.
How much the fee could costs residents isn’t clear, Urbana City Administrator Kerry Brugger said, and that’s one of the issues the committee will research.
A new stormwater fee isn’t a certainty right now, he said, and the committee will decide what they believe is the best solution.
But he stressed the need to create a new revenue stream for the stormwater infrastructure.
“We have a lot of infrastructure that has to be maintained, repaired, upgraded and improved,” Brugger said.
Most of the work that has been done so far comes directly out of city’s general fund, which means less money for other city projects, he said.
More than half of the 35 miles of storm lines that run through the city need updating, Bumbalough said.
“We believe that storm water is another utility that needs its own funding source in order to pay for necessary repairs,” Bumbalough said. “It’s about new projects and adding storm lines where there aren’t any now. But the majority of the project would go to repairs. As any system ages, it needs to be replaced.”
The city has been researching a stormwater utility since 2008, Brugger said, including visits with other cities on how they addressed the problem.
“It’s an opportunity to verify the need that we have and understand from the community what they believe would be a fair way of providing a revenue source,” he said.
In recent years the city has updated more than three miles of waterlines, which was paid for from designated water funds.
The city of Springfield set up a similar advisory committee before its leaders decided to create a stormwater utility, Springfield Stormwater Coordinator Sky Schelle said.
“They helped determine a lot of the initial policies and procedures for the utility and gave guidance on what the rate structures should be and what the money needed to go for,” he said.
Springfield started charging residents and businesses for stormwater in January 2012, due to EPA mandates to update its stormwater system. The environmental agency wanted the city to reduce the amounts of raw sewage overflowing from combined sewers into Buck Creek and Mad River.
Residents and businesses in Springfield pay a stormwater fee based on how much hard surfaces are on their property that causes rain water to run off and into the city’s gutters and catch basins.
The lowest residential stormwater bill is just shy of a dollar, while the highest bill is $4.50 per month. Since the utility was introduced, the city of Springfield has collected more than $4.1 million dollars.
The vast majority of the money Springfield has collected has gone to paying off debt on an expansion at the city’s water treatment plant. That project has greatly reduced the sewer overflows into Mad River, Schelle said.
Urbana’s stormwater system is different than Springfield’s, Bumbalough said. The Champaign County city has separate sanitary sewer and stormwater systems.
“None of our stormwater gets treated. It’s discharged into a ditch that runs at an angle through town and discharged into Mad River,” Bumbalough said.
That’s why its wastewater treatment facility is much smaller, he said, and costs residents of Urbana much less to upkeep than Springfield.
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