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Milton council members want slow down with storm water utility

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

A storm drain at the intersection of Davis and Plumb Streets in Milton.

MILTON — The city looks to move full speed ahead with a storm water utility Tuesday, but two new council members are asking it to slow down.

The Milton City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the third and final reading of an ordinance creating a storm water utility. The utility would take storm water maintenance off the property tax rolls and require property owners to pay a monthly fee.

If passed, the utility will go into effect Sept. 1 and homeowners will see their first bills in October.

Milton has to beef up its storm water maintenance to meet standards set by the federal Clean Water Act and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. It was supposed to be removing 20 percent of particles from storm runoff by March 2008, and it must remove 40 percent of particles by March 2013.

The city already does some storm water maintenance through street sweeping and detention basins. But it doesn’t know if it meets the 2008 standard because it hasn’t done the computer modeling required by the DNR to show what percentage of particles it removes.

The proposed budget for the first year of the utility, $373,000, would pay for the modeling and help the city remove more particles to meet the 2008 and 2013 standards. It includes $50,000 for detention basin management, $56,000 for capital improvements and $20,000 for equipment replacement.

But council members Brett Frazier and Fred Hookham aren’t sure that much spending is necessary yet.

“If we don’t know where we’re at in terms of compliance, I don’t know how we know what we need to do next year,” Frazier said.

It’s possible the city already meets the 20 percent requirement with the maintenance it does now, said Laura Bub, DNR storm water specialist.

“Of the communities that have submitted information to us, we’re finding that most of them can meet the 20 percent fairly easily with existing practices,” she said.

But some council members said the city should start preparing now to meet all requirements.

The advisory committee and consultants made an educated guess of what the city will need to do to meet the requirements, said Dave Adams.

“It’s all things that we know are going to have to be done,” he said.

He said the city shouldn’t start with a low utility budget and then surprise people if fees go up in future years.

But Frazier said he’d rather see the city delay spending until the economy improves.

“If we could even put off some of those costs for a year … I don’t see why that would be a bad thing,” he said.

Frazier is advocating a minimal budget of $232,000 for the first year. That would pay for the computer modeling and include the $170,000 the city currently spends each year on storm water maintenance.

The smaller budget would lower the annual fee charged to a single-family home from about $92 to about $55.

Frazier proposed approving the $232,000 budget at the ordinance’s second reading Aug. 4, but his motion died for lack of a second. (Hookham didn’t second the motion because he believes that’s still too much money, he said.) Frazier and Hookham were the only council members to vote against the utility with the full budget at that meeting.

The city will end up with some kind of utility because that’s how it budgeted expenses in 2009, Frazier said. It planned to start the utility in the second half of 2009 and didn’t budget any taxpayer money going to storm water maintenance during that time.

“I’m just arguing for a more slow entrance into the pool,” he said.

Milton frustrated by storm water regulations

Milton officials say they waited as long as possible to address the new storm water requirements because they’re frustrated the city has to meet the requirements in the first place.

The city was supposed to eliminate 20 percent of particles from storm water runoff by March 2008 and must eliminate 40 percent of particles by March 2013. The city doesn’t know if it’s meeting the 2008 standard because it hasn’t done computer modeling required by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

City council members said they don’t think the requirements should apply to them because the city isn’t on a body of water and many larger communities don’t have to meet the standards.

The federal Clean Water Act requires all communities of 10,000 people or larger and communities that are part of an urbanized area to meet the standards, said Laura Bub, storm-water specialist with the DNR. The U.S. Census defines Milton as part of the Janesville metropolitan area.

Most communities, unlike Milton, already have started the computer modeling, Bub said. The department plans to send notices of violation in the next few months to communities that haven’t complied, she said.

Council member Fred Hookham said he’s disappointed the DNR is basing the regulations on computer modeling instead of engineering studies.

“They’re not testing any storm water, they’re not measuring any runoff, they’re not doing anything that’s a measurable standard,” he said.

He said he still has unanswered questions for the DNR, and he doesn’t want to spend money for storm water upgrades before the city knows exactly what it has to do.

“We need to have some serious discussions with the DNR about what compliance consists of,” he said. “You can’t hold me to a standard that nobody can define.”