Stormwater Utility Purpose

Stormwater Utility Purpose

The purpose of the DeKalb County Stormwater Utility is to generate funds to address the County’s backlog of stormwater projects, provide adequate maintenance to avoid future backlogs, secure adequate program staffing and fund capital projects required to address chronic flooding and water quality problems and to ensure compliance with NPDES permit requirements.  More specifically, revenue generated from stormwater fees will support:

• Maintenance of the drainage infrastructure, including routine clean-out and repair.

• Response to drainage complaints.  The backlog of drainage-related work orders is over 2,000 individual problems and continues to grow.

• Repair of new failures of drainage structures (at a historical rate of about 2 per month), including collapse of corroded metal pipes installed decades ago.

• Capital improvement projects (CIP) to address chronic drainage and flood problems that have been neglected due to inadequate funding.

• Capital projects for watershed protection and channel restoration, as required by the new water quality component of DeKalb County’s wastewater treatment plant permits.