Regional effort at stormwater management would spur cooperation, but also a new fee

Jan. 15--The Scranton Sewer Authority sale is an opportunity for urban Northeast Pennsylvania communities to address problems that threaten Lackawanna River water quality and cause flash flooding, one of the region's top environmental advocates said.

The solution would almost surely come at a price, however, likely resulting in a monthly stormwater fee for residents in participating cities and boroughs that some officials worry could be politically unpopular.

Pennsylvania American Water will not take over dedicated stormwater lines as part of the $195 million acquisition of the public utility, leaving Scranton and Dunmore officials to come up with a new way to manage runoff from rainstorms.

Bernie McGurl has been trying to get municipalities to talk about stormwater for years. The executive director of the Lackawanna River Conservation Association said he sees the sewer deal as a chance to bring the issue to the forefront.

The best approach would be for the nearly two dozen urban municipalities that discharge into Lackawanna River in the 350-square-mile watershed in Lackawanna, Luzerne, Wayne and Susquehanna counties to create a regional stormwater authority, Mr. McGurl said.

"The stormwater molecules don't understand the boundaries of politics," he said.

State Sen. John Blake's office has been talking informally with officials in some communities to encourage them to band together to address the problem regionally, said Larry West, the Archbald Democrat's regional director. He would not disclose which communities.

Mr. McGurl and Mr. West highlighted reasons they believe the public should care about stormwater management, including potential for:

n Helping communities better implement flood control.

For example, Scranton's Green Ridge section and parts of Dunmore were hard hit by flash flooding in late July, when some officials estimated their municipalities got soaked with two to three inches of rain in less than an hour, overwhelming stormwater collection systems.

Some of the same areas sustained another round of flooding in early August, and many residents didn't have flood insurance to pay for damage to their homes.

"The reality is I think we've all seen our share of flooding," Mr. West said. "This is truly what we used to identify as a 100-year storm, which was a gauge (to measure extreme rain). Has that changed now? No longer is it a once-in-100-year event ... We have had a couple of them in the last couple of years. What we used to gauge as a 100-year storm, maybe it's a 10-year storm now."

n Improving water quality.

Runoff from rain storms not only can cause erosion that damages people's homes, but it also can carry chemicals from waste and debris in streets into waterways, Mr. McGurl said.

He highlighted a number of possible organic and inorganic chemicals commonly found in and around roads and parking lots, including invisible remnants from vehicle exhaust, road salt and pet excrement.

"It creates a huge urban soup of stormwater," Mr. McGurl said.

In addition, many municipalities have lines that handle both sewage and stormwater and are under EPA scrutiny if the lines are overwhelmed during storms, releasing the foul brew into the river.

Pennsylvania American Water is taking over Scranton Sewer Authority's combined-sewer-overflow system, which includes the EPA-mandated $140 million project to increase the operation's capacity, preventing discharges into the river -- and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.

n Addressing aging infrastructure.

Over the decades, municipalities and developers built culverts, catch basins, retention ponds and the like to deal with runoff, and many of those improvements are aging or breaking down.

As an example, Mr. McGurl recalled last month a segment of Dunham Drive caved in when large spillway pipes underneath the road that carry runoff from Dunmore Reservoir No. 1 deteriorated and gave out in Dunmore.

The thoroughfare is a route many of the 520 heavy trucks that haul waste to Keystone Sanitary Landfill each day take and required detouring a significant amount of traffic. It is currently under repair.

"There's dozens of bridges and culvert systems around the municipalities that are waiting to collapse," Mr. McGurl said. "If we addressed (infrastructure) regionally, we could manage it on a watershed-wide basis instead of not being able to afford to fix the culvert down the street."

Mr. West said the approach could lead to efficiency, as an single engineering firm could oversee stormwater issues for members of the entire authority, eliminating duplication of services and fostering a more uniform approach.

'Forgotten infrastructure'

The United States is home to about 1,600 stormwater authorities of varying sizes, a 2016 survey by Western Kentucky University found, but the study only identified seven authorities in Pennsylvania because the authorizing legislation is relatively new.

The national average monthly single-family residential fee was $5.14, and the median fee was $4, the survey found. Most fees increase over time and are tied to the consumer price index. The fees ranged from nothing to $69.25 per month.

Warren Campbell, Ph.D., one of the study's authors, sees the spread of stormwater management agencies as inevitable given that tens of thousands of communities are enrolled in the National Flood Insurance Program and the likelihood that the EPA will at some point introduce new mandates.

Still, Dr. Campbell knows firsthand it can be difficult to implement a new fee from his time as hydrologist of Huntsville, Alabama, when the city tried to initiate a stormwater fee to fund flood-control efforts more than a decade ago.

"The reaction could not have been stronger if we proposed killing their firstborn child," he said.

Although a group of taxpayers organized and defeated the proposal, Dr. Campbell said he believes city officials could have communicated more effectively with the public if officials had the information from the surveys he now spearheads.

The professor sees the measure as a necessity comparable to sewer fees that most people pay without complaint.

"The problem is it's the forgotten infrastructure," Dr. Campbell said. "People forget about it until you have the big flood. That's when people realize you have to do something."

'Hard sell'

Scranton Business Administrator David Bulzoni sees merit in tackling stormwater regionally. That is why the city instructed an engineering firm to evaluate a regional approach in its cost-benefit analysis on different ways to create a stormwater authority.

Dunmore Solicitor Thomas Cummings envisioned a more limited regional approach.

"This discussion that we've had is that each community should control its own destiny as far as their financial obligation," Mr. Cummings said. "But it should be addressed regionally because we may complement each other -- much like the zoning hearing board, you have a regional planning commission, and each municipality has its own zoning ordinance and its own zoning board. But there's a regional plan."

Carbondale Mayor Justin Taylor said he would be interested in discussing a regional approach to stormwater management but said residents might be understandably reluctant to embrace a new fee.

The city implemented a $5 monthly sewer maintenance fee, a fire protection fee that varies depending on the size of buildings and a $300 annual garbage fee, he said.

"Bernie has a great idea," Mr. Taylor said. "The biggest problem at the end of the day is what it's going to cost and who's going to pay for it. It's going to be a hard sell to get all of these municipalities to get on board with something that ... We would definitely talk about it though. Seven members of council have to make the decision. We're always looking to partner with other agencies."

Contact the writer: kwind@timesshamrock.com, @kwindTT on Twitter

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