Richmond Doesn’t Need to Soak Its Taxpayers to Fix the Pipes

By A Barton Hinkle

Times change. So do people, and circumstances. And Doug Wilder, who as governor withstood the fury of fellow Democrats for insisting on state spending cuts rather than tax hikes, now seems determined to confound fiscal conservatives as well.

The mayor of Richmond has proposed steep new fees for water service to fund stormwater drainage projects. His proposal would sock homeowners with an annual fee of $89, and levy considerably higher fees upon businesses, nonprofit groups, and even churches. City Council President William Pantele rues not the taxing, but the timing: “I regret that it’s coming too late,” he says. “We’re preparing to vote on a budget in three weeks.”

To the contrary, the proposal seems to be coming rather soon.

True, the flooding that has devastated Battery Park and, before that, the Shockoe area downtown clearly demonstrates the need for the city to improve its stormwater system. Wilder deserves credit for staying out front on the issue.

BUT ONLY slightly more than a decade ago the city undertook a 12- year, $100-million project to upgrade its combined-sewage-overflow (CSO) system. It did so under the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency, because the city’s existing CSO system mixed rainwater with effluent in heavy storms – resulting in the pollution of the James River with raw sewage.

In fact, the problems with the CSO system helped sell the restoration of the downtown canals. The argument was made that the city could, in essence, kill two birds with one stone. Not only would the canals generate vast riches through new development; the city could achieve some economy of scale by, at the same time, putting in new pipes to address its combined sewer overflow (CSO) problem. Millions were sunk into the canal project, and to a large extent it has paid a nice return on the investment, even if it has not transformed the city into the Shangri-la of paid consultants’ predictions.

Wilder’s proposal, according to a Friday news account, “would pay for an estimated $100 million in stormwater improvements over the next 15 years. . . . [It] also is designed to reduce Richmond’s contribution to pollution problems affecting the Chesapeake Bay and enable the city to comply with state regulations scheduled to take effect in mid-2009 for polluted runoff into the James River and its tributaries.”

Wilder, of course, is talking about far more than just the CSO system around the downtown area. Commendably, his proposal encompasses catch basins, drainage ditches, and so on, including in long-neglected parts of South Richmond. Splendid. But is it really necessary to sock homeowners, in particular, with another big drain on their bank accounts?

Is it necessary to do so, in particular, in the wake of revelations about the millions of dollars of waste in Richmond government? City auditor Umesh Dalal found $19 million just by looking at just a part of the school system’s operations – money that is, in effect, poured down the drain.

After all, homeowners in Richmond already pay some of the highest fees for water and sewage service in the country. The city’s basic rate for the services amounts to $43.56 per month – more than two and a half times the basic rate in Henrico. But it gets worse: According to Charles Pool, a local resident who has made a study of the issue, a little old lady on Social Security who uses only 100 cubic feet of water a month (about 748 gallons) would pay more over the course of a year in water and wastewater fees than a corporate CEO across town would pay to fill his Olympic-sized swimming pool. (She would pay more than $500 for the year; the CEO would pay only $412 to fill his 660,253-gallon pool.)

THAT’S BECAUSE Richmond, absurdly, offers a volume discount: The more water and water-disposal service you use, the less you pay per volume unit. Not only does this not encourage conservation – it actively encourages consumption. By contrast, Henrico residents who conserve water can receive a discount for doing so if they use less than 600 cubic feet of water per month.

In effect, then, the city is to a certain degree subsidizing the very problem it needs to solve. It could start addressing the wastewater question by not encouraging people to waste water. And if stormwater runoff is a bigger problem than wastewater, then there’s a better fix: Tax tarmac by charging a runoff fee for every hundred square feet of parking lot.

Raising water-usage rates for high-volume consumption and lowering the rates at the low-consumption end could encourage conservation without hurting the bottom line.

And it would certainly reflect better on a mayor who made his name as a man who preferred cutting waste to raising taxes.

ILLUSTRATION: DRAWING

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