The James City County Board of Supervisors largely opposed the creation of a stormwater utility at a budget work session on Saturday, instead voicing support for using general tax dollars to pay for projects that handle runoff from precipitation.
At the heart of the matter is the county’s network of drainage equipment, like ditches, ponds designed to catch runoff from precipitation and drainage systems underneath roads and gutters.
The water that enters these systems is often polluted with oils, herbicides and insecticides, bacteria from pet waste and trash it picks up on developed surfaces like asphalt and rooftops.
Phosphorous, nitrogen and sediments — known as nutrients — are also especially targeted as they get into the water and start a process that can culminate in the death of insects and plant life that help keep standing water clean.
State and federal requirements for curbing those pollutants from the stormwater system loom in the coming years, with specific pollution reduction targets the county must meet. Those requirements are enshrined in the county’s Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems permit — known as an MS4 permit in government circles — from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
“The MS4 requirements are driving a tremendous amount of work,” John Horne, the county’s director of general services, said at Saturday’s meeting.
That work is currently being carried out by the James City County Stormwater Division, which is funded by general tax dollars. The county could also turn to the creation of a stormwater utility — funded not from tax dollars but from bills charged to property owners — to pay for the work, but Supervisors Michael Hipple (Powhatan), Kevin Onizuk (Jamestown) and Mary Jones (Berkeley) all said Saturday they would rather see the money come from tax dollars.
“I don’t support a separate utility fee,” Jones said. “I want to prioritize it in the budget.”
Jones said citizens are not interested in an additional fee. She pointed to the more than $24 million the county has spent on the Greenspace and Purchase of Development Rights programs — where the county pays landowners to conserve their property — as an example of how the county could have better prioritized for the looming stormwater expenses.
Supervisor John McGlennon (Roberts) said James City County has many problems other communities do not have to handle.
“There’s a lot of neighborhoods where this is a very serious problem, and they’re looking for help,” he said, noting some neighborhoods lack homeowner’s associations to build and manage stormwater infrastructure and some neighborhoods in the county were built on lands where they should not have been built.
Horne said the Stormwater Division is devoting 100 percent of its resources to meeting MS4 requirements. That division is funded out of general tax dollars to the tune of $2.2 million per year, split in the current fiscal year between $700,000 for operations and $1.5 million for projects.
Those projects take the form of infrastructure, like restoring streams that have been damaged by erosion and repairing or upgrading existing stormwater retention ponds. They also take the form of public outreach, like educating the public about how to apply fertilizers, which can cause more nutrients to enter the stormwater system.
County Administrator Bryan Hill said Saturday that staff estimates it will take an additional $1.9 million per year to properly fund the Stormwater Division to handle its obligations. That means almost $2 million more needs to be found in tax revenues or a utility needs to be created that can bill customers to pay for the work.
“All the jurisdictions are setting up programs with significant additional expenditures to deal with this issue,” Horne said of other localities affected by stormwater mandates. The MS4 requirements stem from the Environmental Protection Agency and are overseen in Virginia by DEQ.
How much the work will ultimately cost remains unknown. The county is in the third year of a five-year MS4 permit, during which time it is tasked with setting up its stormwater program and monitoring waterways to establish a baseline of pollution levels. It must also cut its pollution levels by 5 percent during that time, with goals of 40 percent reduction in the second five-year window and 100 percent reduction in the third.
Horne said Monday the Environmental Protection Agency generated computer models of pollution in 2013 to guide localities in cutting pollution, however those models do not use local data. A new model is underway, expected to be finished in 2017 that should offer James City County and the other localities affected by the mandates a better idea of how much they will have to cut.
The fluid nature of the reduction targets was a source of frustration for the supervisors Saturday.
“What goals are we trying to attain?” asked Supervisor Jim Kennedy (Stonehouse). “What have we accomplished? What is left?”
He called James City County a leader in Virginia for stormwater management and environmental stewardship.
For Jones, the county has already achieved much progress toward stormwater management.
“I would like to see us be better advocates for what we’ve achieved until this point,” she said.
Ultimately, the division is responsible for submitting an action plan to DEQ by September for how the county will meet its requirements.
“We’re already doing things in anticipation of what we in our professional judgment believe needs to be in such a plan,” Horne said, pointing to nutrient-management plans on county-owned lands and stream restoration projects. Those projects are believed to generate credit toward the pollution reduction targets.
The county is also hopeful credit can be received for the Greenspace and PDR programs. The lands conserved by those programs shields them from some of the pollutants, though federal regulators behind the MS4 requirements have yet to decide whether conservation programs are applicable.
“While we’re way ahead of the curve compared to most jurisdictions with that type of open space preservation, there are a number of other places that have similar programs and we’re all trying to convince EPA that they should be eligible,” Horne said.
Hill has yet to release his proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which would contain any additional spending for stormwater issues.
During Saturday’s presentation, he included the approximately $1.9 million of stormwater costs among a list of priorities for the upcoming budget that would likely have to be funded through a tax increase. Should the supervisors find a majority willing to vote for a utility, the county would need about $360,000 to set it up.
The county had a stormwater utility for a short time in 2008, which generated about $2.4 million that year by billing property owners. The utility was abolished later that year and replaced by the Stormwater Division.
Most localities in Hampton Roads operate stormwater utilities, with the three Historic Triangle localities and Poquoson the lone exceptions. Rates at those utilities range from about $6 per month per home in Suffolk and Isle of Wight County to $12.71 per month in Virginia Beach.
A projected rate for a James City County utility has not yet been estimated by county staff.
Should the county elect to pay for the work from tax revenues without cutting spending elsewhere, staff estimates it would tack an additional 1.55 cents per $100 of assessed value to the real estate tax rate.
That would translate to about $45.30 per year for the owner of a $300,000 home. Charges from the 2008 utility averaged out to about $58.50 for the average home.
Hill will present his proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year — which runs from July 1 through June 2016 — next month. Any tax increase would go into effect at the start of that fiscal year. The supervisors will hold a public hearing on it in April, prior to a scheduled adoption in May.
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