A stormwater user fee model for operations and maintenance in small cities

Abstract

In this paper, a stormwater fee specifically for small municipalities was developed through a simplification of the Equivalent Residential Unit (ERU) system, which is the main method applied in the United States. The Simplified ERU is based on the amount of impervious area and the fee considers the operations and maintenance costs, besides having a single class of billing. It was applied in Santo Amaro da Imperatriz city, located in the southern region of Brazil, which can be classified as a small city. The value of the Simplified ERU (294.32 m2) was similar to the average impervious area in the United States (269.42 m2) and it was equivalent to $0.28 per square meter (within the range of other countries' fees). The method proved to be a feasible and rapid technique for funding stormwater services, and its simplicity allows its application in different locations. This funding model can generate revenue to address current stormwater problems, such as the lack of funding for existing drainage infrastructure, and contribute to downstream flooding reduction. This paper also intends to encourage discussion about the methods for designing a stormwater fee in the academic community, which is still incipient.

Willingness to Pay for the Maintenance of Green Infrastructure in Six Chinese Pilot Sponge Cities

“…Stormwater fees are important to maintain the public stormwater system, and it is a way for communities to share the cost of a public service to decrease the negative impacts of urbanization and climate change [30]. As mentioned above, most of the respondents would like to pay a maintenance fee for GI, but the amount of payment may not cover the actual maintenance costs.…”

“…Collecting stormwater fees has been suggested as a dedicated and stable source for covering the maintenance funding [3,29,30], which has been done in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States [1,[29][30][31][32][33]. Generally, stormwater management facilities rely on government funds, but the funds normally have restrictions on their use for stormwaterrelated activities [3].…”

Occurrences of disasters involving rains in the state of Tocantins

“…In Brazil, most of these disasters are associated with lack of water, such as drought, or excess of it, such as heavy rains, which generate floods [3].…”

Urban stormwater characterization, control, and treatment

“…A study conducted in Brazil evaluated small municipalities (1,000–20,000 residents) comparing the use of the Equivalent Residential Unit (ERU) system to a Simplified Equivalent Residential Unit (SERU) system to determine a stormwater user fee for operations and maintenance. The SERU, which was based on impervious areas of urban lots and the number of urban lots in a city, was found to require fewer resources and can therefore be a useful metric for areas that do not have complex stormwater management in place (Tasca, Finotti, Goerl, & Tasca, 2019). A paper published in 2019 asked the question “is a stormwater fee a rain tax?” to discuss the unique financing of stormwater management.…”