January 19, 2016 Testimony of Howard County Sierra Club to Howard County Council
The Watershed Protection and Restoration Fee is not a "rain tax". Neither is the water bill the county sends out, or the sewage fee charged to clean water after it's been used.
Rain falling on impervious surfaces like roofs, pavement, and lawns, also gets dirty. The rain washes off oil, soot, chemicals, trash, and pet waste, but not into a pipe leading to a treatment plant. It ends up in the gutter, then in the storm drain, then in an open waterway. Drainage ditch, stream or river, all empty into the Chesapeake Bay.
We can stop polluting the Bay by preventing polluted runoff. First, don't pollute the water; second, don't let it run off. Keep water onsite in a rain barrel, pond, or garden, where it can evaporate or seep into the ground. That cleans the water. The county will even help pay to install those features, and then reduce the fee charged to that property.
The rain falls on everyone, but the fee is charged only to those who allow polluted water to run off their property.
The remediations are federally mandated: the county has to pay for them somehow. To take the money from the general fund will mean cuts that everyone feels, or higher taxes that everyone pays. In contrast, the fee charged for a vast, featureless parking lot is paid by a vast, featureless corporation. Owners of homes and small businesses, and even large non-profit organizations, can eliminate their fees by using best management practices on their stormwater runoff.
The Watershed Protection and Restoration Fee educates the public, rewards compliance, encourages clean construction, and creates a revenue stream that the citizens can account for. Eliminating the "rain tax" means hiding the cost, and the problem, as a favor to the largest corporations that generate the most pollution. Let's wait to eliminate the fee until we eliminate the polluted water.