Residents Unhappy With Proposed Stormwater Fees
The tiki torches weren’t lit when the villagers showed up, but they may have been by the time everyone left.
More than 100 frustrated Richmond residents turned out to the Richmond Dining Hall building at the Richmond Fairgrounds Thursday night to hear about proposed stormwater management fees in rural areas.
The timing of the meeting comes exactly one week after the City of Ottawa hosted a workshop for Ward 21 residents at the Alfred Taylor Community Centre in North Gower in preparation for the fall City of Ottawa Rural Summit.
Ward 21 Councillor David Brown opposes the new structure and has referred to the plan as a “ditch tax.” He says it will negatively and unfairly impact people living in rural Ottawa. Brown said that there are about 5,000 kilometres of rural ditches in Ottawa with only about 150 kilometres of stormwater piping. He said there is no need for much beyond the current rural ditches.
One of the recommendations being explored by city staff is using impervious surfaces captured using aerial imagery as the basis for allocating stormwater charges. Impervious surfaces refer to areas on a property considered highly resistant to water absorption, such as pavement, asphalt, concrete, brick, building material and structure rooftops.
Simply put, the city is proposing to move away from a flat stormwater fee to a charge based on the amount of impervious surface on the property. The new fee would be added to rural property taxes.
The new fee structure will be a complex one. The city is proposing that the fee would be based on areas which cannot drain water, like driveways, barns, sheds, and houses. However, many rural properties and farms in Ward 21 outside of the villages of Manotick, Richmond, North Gower and Kars have gravel driveways where water can soak in.
The meeting in Richmond was the first of five rural meetings in the city, with the next one scheduled for Thurs., May 23 at the Metcalfe Community Centre at 6 p.m. There is also a June 17 meeting in Carp, and June 25 meetings in Navan and Cumberland.
The takeaway from many people comes down to the same issue that has been the troubling reality of rural life since the city was amalgamated a quarter century ago. As one longtime resident at the meeting commented, “you can’t always plug a city peg into a rural hole.”
The major argument against the changes is that the urban areas of Ottawa have thousands of kilometers of sewers to drain away stormwater. Stormwater on rural properties rely on natural run-offs, with the water being absorbed into the ground and draining into roadside ditches.
“What the city is planning to do is based upon the impervious square footage with our properties that we would pay an annual tax based on that square foot,” Richmond resident Bob Moore told CTV after the meeting. “I see it as being a shift in taxation from the urban and suburban areas to the rural area and yet we are not getting the benefits. My driveway is 150 feet long and all of that water this morning is soaked into the ground. And in the city’s preliminary study to council, they were going to disregard gravel driveways. Why can’t we just stick with the current assessment? Why complicate life?”
Brown is urging local residents in opposition to the new fee structure to send in their comments and concerns on how these changes will negatively impact them.
You can do this by going to engage.ottawa.ca/rates to provide your feedback online or attend one of the upcoming rural community consultation sessions. You can also email your thoughts to waterrates@ottawa.ca.
