Connecticut property owners — including colleges and other tax exempt organizations — may pay a new fee to reduce stormwater pollution that’s damaging Long Island Sound and other waterways.

The state House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly approved a bill that gives towns and cities the option to form a stormwater authority to tax property owners and generate revenue to reduce pollution.

The legislation is now before the state Senate.

"[This bill] represents a big step forward in Connecticut’s stormwater management," said Bill Lucey, the Long Island Soundkeeper.

"For decades and decades, our rivers and the Sound have suffered pollution from runoff that carries pesticides, fertilizers, pet waste and litter — and bacteria from overflowing sewers," Lucey said.

The legislation is voluntary, meaning towns and cities can opt out and not create a stormwater authority, the legal mechanism that sets fees and administers the revenue.

The money can be used for a variety of pollution reduction systems, including catch basin improvements, separating storm and sewer lines, planting rain gardens and installing bioswales, a garden-like structure that stores water underground, filters it and then releases the liquid into the ground.

But not everyone supports the idea of a “storm tax,” as some call the fee.

Jennifer Anderson, a Fairfield University vice president for marketing, said the tax exempt school already contributes its fair share to the town.

"We are empathetic to the fiscal challenges our local communities are facing, but this proposal would lead to increased tuition costs for our students and families, who are already significant contributors to the town economy," Anderson told lawmakers.

New approach

The bill expands a 2007 pilot program that allowed New Haven, New London and Norwalk to explore a stormwater fee.

New London last year became the first community in the state to establish a stormwater authority to collect revenue and administer the program.

Norwalk and New Haven failed to garner the political will to establish the taxing authority.

New London’s fee is based on the size of property. For example, residential homeowners would pay between $30 to $150 per year, depending on the size of their home.

Property with large impervious surfaces, such as parking lots, would pay a rate based on $7.50 per 1,000 feet of surface.

"This bill establishes a way to raise funds beyond the standard property tax mill rate by placing a fee on various types of structures and impervious surfaces such as parking lots." Lucey said.

"It incentivizes large landowners, like big box stores and universities, to reduce their costs by installing rain gardens, bioswales, blue roofs or permeable pavement that harness the natural power of earth and plants to filter runoff and prevent flooding," Lucey added.

Ozzie Inglese, director of water permits and enforcement for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said passage of the bill will represent considerable progress.

"It’s a mechanism that is widely used across the country," Inglese said. "So here we are 12 years later and we are kind of hoping something like this will be available for municipalities."

Overflowing treatment plants

With each rain, runoff water washes across parking lots, roofs, driveways and roads, collecting pollutants such as pesticides, nitrogen and phosphates that are harmful to waterways.

But new discharge standards now kicking in — increased catch basin maintenance and leak detection, for example, — pose a financial challenge for communities.

Inglese said DEEP does not yet have a handle on the overall cost for meeting the more stringent permit requirements.

Most of the state’s big cities, such as Bridgeport and New Haven, still use combined storm and sewer lines, which diverts both sources of pollution to a wastewater treatment plant.

But heavy rain can overwhelm those plants and force operators to send untreated wastewater and stormwater into a waterway such as Long Island Sound.

The suburbs tend to mostly have separate storm and sewer lines, the preferred way of handling each source of pollution.

The overall goal is to use runoff mitigation techniques to reduce the volume of stormwater entering the systems, Inglese said.

Environmentalists say the best way to reduce stormwater is to filter it through the ground, with green areas, gardens or bioswales. Those features are built along the edge of large parking lots or areas with substantial impervious ground cover.

"One key indicator within a local watershed is once you get an over 11 percent impervious area there is a correlation in the health of the receiving stream," Inglese said, referring to where the runoff goes.

Towns and cities across New England and the U.S. are turning to stormwater fees to help cover the cost of reducing runoff pollution and meeting discharge permits.

Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts have established numerous stormwater utilities and overall the U.S. has created nearly 1,600 stormwater authorities.

Not so fast

While the so-called storm tax offers a source of steady revenue, tax exempt property owners are not happy about paying a new fee.

Under the bill, only farmland and open space cannot be taxed.

Andrea Rynn, a spokeswoman for the Western CT Health Network, told lawmakers the fee will increase the cost of healthcare.

"When you are the organization making the payment, it matters not whether the payment is called a municipal public safety and infrastructure benefit charge or a tax," Rynn said.

"If adopted, this levy will inevitably result in an increase in the cost of healthcare in Connecticut," Rynn said.

State Rep. Chris Davis, R-East Windsor, said the benefits outweigh the downside of the fee.

"This impacts about 122 towns and costs range greatly, with some of them spending $500,000 and some over a million dollars a year," Davis said, referring to the cost of meeting stormwater standards.

The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities also supported the bill.

"[The bill] will provide the foundation for needed local revenue diversification in order to reduce municipal over reliance on a regressive property tax system and diminishing state aid to fund essential services and mandated programs," CCM said in a statement.

Gian-Carl Casa, president of the Alliance, which represents nonprofit agencies, said the bill will take services away from those who need them the most.

"It would cause nonprofits to shut their doors, leaving the people they serve with nowhere to turn," Casa said.

bcummings@ctpost.com