Lexington, KY - Lexington is getting serious about clean water. In 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Commonwealth of Kentucky sued Lexington over violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act, mostly due to raw sewage in our creeks and streams and from polluted storm water that flood our low lying areas. In February of 2008, Lexington and the EPA entered into an agreement (known as the Consent Decree), in which Lexington agreed to take aggressive steps over the next decade to fix chronic problems with our storm and sanitary sewer systems. (The Consent Decree has not yet been approved by the U.S. District Court).
The problem is that rain water flows over roofs, parking lots and streets (what we call impervious surfaces), picking up motor oil and silt along the way, and ends up polluting our streams and flooding our low lying areas rather than soaking into the soil. In addition, many downspouts and floor drains are illegally tied into the sanitary sewer system, so that heavy rains flood out our sanitary sewers and overwhelm our pump stations.
To raise funds to address these serious issues, in 2009 the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council enacted a new water quality management fee of $4.32 per month for each residential household. Apartment complexes and non-residential properties are assessed a comparable rate of $4.32 per month for every 2,500 square feet of impervious surfaces. The new fee will generate about $12 million of revenues per year, and will be used to maintain our storm sewer infrastructure and to fund projects.
Expenditures of funds from the water quality management fee fall into three broad categories in Fiscal Year 2010-11. About $3.5 million is being used to cover personnel and operating costs for managing LFUCG's storm water quality management program, mostly through LFUCG's Divisions of Water Quality, Engineering, Streets & Roads, Revenue, and Environmental Policy. Approximately $7 million of the fee will be used for professional services, maintenance and for construction projects, including water shed and storm sewer mapping studies, database development, and construction projects to begin mitigation efforts. Finally, about $1.5 million of the fees will be used for an incentive grant program to provide financial assistance for community projects to improve water quality, address storm water runoff and to educate the public.
Overall, LFUCG's storm water quality management program attempts to address a number of the EPA's key areas of concern: illicit discharge detection and elimination, construction site storm water runoff control, pollution prevention in residential and commercial areas, pollution prevention for municipal operations, industrial facility and municipal waste facility pollution prevention, water quality monitoring, public education and outreach, public involvement and participation, and reporting and record keeping.
In the early years of the program, efforts will concentrate on project planning, watershed and storm sewer mapping, and on database development. Shortly into the program, LFUCG will begin construction of the large-scale projects needed to make substantial progress in resolving our storm water quality issues, many of which will cost tens of millions of dollars to complete. These will include the construction and repair of storm water systems in neighborhoods, some for the first time, and to begin disconnecting all of the downspouts and floor drains that flood our sanitary sewer system.
We likely will be living with the EPA Consent Decree for many years to come, and resolving Lexington's water quality issues will involve the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars. To learn more about the water quality management fee and the EPA Consent Decree, please visit my council website, www.LexingtonKy.gov/District10.