The perception that urban stormwater policies are non-existent, incomplete, or lacking in aspects that concern the environment and quality of life in cities has become increasingly common. This is partly due to the increased frequency and magnitude of rainfall events resulting from climate change and its economic, social, and environmental consequences. Population concentration and changes in patterns of living, construction, and urbanization contribute to the pollution of water runoff and receiving waters. Thus, quantity and quality problems add up and often require costly solutions, which are then addressed as economic issues. To deal with all these aspects, many of which were previously absent, stormwater public policies require a paradigm shift to break away from institutional inertia and dependence on the previous path. Without the aim of exhausting the subject, this paper discusses the policy aspects that concern stormwater and the current and desired paradigm shift.

Epidemics in general and dengue in particular surcharge the health services and the economy. However, the fighting actions are circumscribed to the health sector despite the known positive economic impacts that the investments in water supply and sanitation services (WSS) may cause on society and public health. Besides the fact that urban WSS infrastructure is closely linked to disease prevention, in Brazil, the user's perception and demand are very few and many institutional aspects, like the integration between local WSS, health, environment, and development of city councils, need to be improved and better aligned. In this way, disease control and vector density reduction remain challenges to be overcome. This article addresses the need for greater institutionalization of urban WSS relating them to health aspects from official data. It concludes that the negative impacts of lacking universal access to WSS on dengue and other mosquito diseases are dispersed in all cities, regions, and populations regardless of their degree of development. Furthermore, contrary to what is normally emphasized, the analysis carried out shows that the lack of urban stormwater management systems may be an important component of WSS in preventing the proliferation of dengue disease.

One of the most complex and difficult questions to answer concerns how to organize and economically support public services of all kinds. In terms of services that involve a multiplicity of actors and objectives, as is the case with urban stormwater management, the difficulty is magnified and resources never seem to be sufficient. This paper reviews the successful approaches to stormwater management in a number of countries and concludes that it is both feasible and possible to successfully structure stormwater management in cities using a variety of models and incentives. With examples from cases practiced in the USA and Canada, based theoretically on the user-pays principle and on the fair distribution of impacts, the text innovates showing not only a technically and legally viable option, but an opportunity for users to become aware of the importance of reducing environmental impacts. By raising the possibility of delivering services out of the general public budget, reducing the taxation of all in exchange for charging only users and improving the performance, the discussion is directed, in an innovative way, to a very rarely questioned aspect and links the change in mentality from and economic way of thinking towards the new stormwater paradigm shift and SDGs.

Todo o conteúdo deste livro está licenciado sob uma Licença de Atribuição Creative Commons. Atribuição 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0).O conteúdo dos artigos e seus dados em sua forma, correção e confiabilidade são de responsabilidade exclusiva dos autores. Permitido o download da obra e o compartilhamento desde que sejam atribuídos créditos aos autores, mas sem a possibilidade de alterá-la de nenhuma forma ou utilizá-la para fins comerciais.