City approves new stormwater and flood control utility

Northampton on March 20 approved a stormwater and flood control utility that will help the city upgrade and maintain infrastructure that has been in place for more than 70 years.

The initiative comes in response to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mandate that the city improve its flood-control system. The creation of the utility will provide a revenue stream for infrastructure outside of the annual city budget.

Board of Public Works Chair Terry Culhane said one advantage of creating the utility is that it will collect revenue from colleges and other nonprofits that are exempt from property taxes. He estimated that the utility will generate about $2 million a year in revenue, with about 10 percent of the fees coming from nonprofits.

The $2 million is “probably not enough to pay cash for everything, but it’s certainly enough to begin methodically chipping away at these issues,” Culhane said.

“It’s nice to have an answer when [federal authorities] say, ‘Well, what are you doing?’” Culhane added. “You can begin to set policy. You can begin to make long-term plans.”

Fees will be based on the total square footage of impervious areas such as driveways, parking lots and roofs. Fees for residential properties of no more than three units are expected to range from $61 to $233 a year, according to a fact sheet from the city. Fees for larger residential structures and commercial properties will be calculated individually.

The flood-control mechanisms built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the years before World War II include a one-mile-long levee on the Connecticut River as well as concrete floodwalls, a pump station and an emergency generator.

Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and other major storms since then, the Army Corps of Engineers has been more active in pushing for upgrades in flood-control mechanisms, according to Culhane.

One directive requires Northampton to clean out all of its roughly 5,000 catch basins at least once a year, a task for which the city previously lacked sufficient resources, Culhane said.

Other Massachusetts communities that have created stormwater utilities include Chicopee, Newton and Reading.