Dormont Council has approved a new stormwater authority, tasking the group with collecting and administering fees to maintain and expand the borough's storm-sewer system.
By a 5-1 vote Monday night — Councilman Drew Lehman was absent and John Maggio dissented — council cleared the way for the new semi-independent authority of borough government to set fees based on each property's stormwater runoff-producing “impervious area” and start collecting fees as soon as January.
Impervious areas include such things as roofs, sidewalks, driveways and parking lots.
“This is the first major governmental change in Dormont since 1911, when council recognized the fire department,” said Council President Bill McCartney.
Dormont faces state and federal deadlines for reducing the amount of stormwater, sediment and pollutants getting dumped into Saw Mill Run, with the first deadline for submitting a plan on Dec. 31, said Councilwoman Joan Hodson.
Council on Monday also approved a contract for up to $10,000 for a consultant to help McCartney and borough engineer Wayne McVicar to make that plan.
The new authority will be responsible for planning and funding improvements to Dormont's 12 miles of storm sewers and meeting the 2026 deadline for reducing pollutants from 171 tons of sediment per year to 23 tons per year.
The reductions and submitting a plan for making them are required by the state Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental Protection Agency in order for Dormont to renew its permit for discharging stormwater into Saw Mill Run.
“Nobody paid much attention to stormwater permits in Allegheny County until the last couple of years,” Hodson said. “It's going to cost money to meet these goals.”
Maggio said he opposed establishing new fees when he still had concerns about the rest of the budget.
“I don't think we're in a position to manage new fees, because we're not efficiently managing what we have already,” he said.
The five-member authority board initially will be the same people as the borough's ad hoc stormwater advisory committee, which studied Dormont's runoff issues, its infrastructure needs and the government requirements over the last two years.
That committee provided the initial recommendation that Dormont form a stormwater authority.
Members' initial terms will be from one to five years, so council will appoint or reappoint members on a staggered basis.
The next few months will be spent waiting for the state to recognize the authority's incorporation, then organizing to elect officers, creating an official list of improvements to be made and setting the fees, McCartney said.
A consultant earlier this spring said properties would be measured in “equivalent stormwater units,” or ESUs, based on the average 1,883 square feet of runoff-producing rooftops, sidewalks, porches and driveways at Dormont's approximately 2,400 single-family homes.
Based on that consultant's study, single-family homes would all pay $9 a month for one ESU.
Owners of all other properties would be charged a flat monthly fee based on how many ESUs their property's impervious area represents.
For example, an apartment building with about 3,800 square feet of rooftops, sidewalks and parking lots would pay for two ESUs.
One of the authority's expenses will be paying the borough back for staff time and the fee-structure consultant involved in the authority's creation, which McCartney estimated at $150,000 to $200,000.
Other pending projects include flood-reduction efforts beneath Athens Alley, estimated to cost about $600,000, he said.
Matthew Santoni is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412 380 5625 or msantoni@tribweb.com.
