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Approximately 68,900 Wyoming Valley area residential property owners will receive their first bill for a new stormwater fee this week, according to the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority.
Bills were mailed to this group Monday, said Donna Gillis, the authority’s public relations and regulatory liaison.
The fee stems from the authority’s agreement to handle a federal Susquehanna River pollution reduction mandate on behalf of 32 municipalities that requires less sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus washed into the Chesapeake Bay over the next five years.
Payments are based on the amount of nonabsorbent impervious area (IA) within each parcel.
The fee is $1 per month — $12 a year — for 2,599 parcels with an IA ranging from 100 to 499 square feet.
A monthly fee of $4.80 will be charged — $57.60 per year — for parcels with an IA ranging from 500 to 6,999 square feet. Most residential parcels fall into this category — 66,249.
The fee will be listed separately and added to sanitary bills for existing authority customers and mailed individually for property owners in municipalities that don’t rely on the authority for wastewater treatment.
Commercial bills
Bills for larger, mostly commercial and industrial properties will be mailed in mid-January, Gillis said.
The 8,391 parcels in this group have an IA of 7,000 square feet or more and will be charged $1.70 for each 1,000 square foot of IA. The average IA of these parcels is 45,741 square feet, which equates to a stormwater fee of $77.76 per month, or $933.12 annually.
There is no fee if the IA is 99 square feet or less. This would apply to undeveloped parcels or those containing only a tiny structure, such as a shed. A total of 3,169 parcels fall into this category.
To prepare property owners, the authority sent advance billing notices to all fee payers in December, Gillis said.
The following municipalities opted to participate in the authority program based on the premise a regional plan would be more cost efficient, the authority said: Ashley, Courtdale, Duryea, Edwardsville, Exeter, Forty Fort, Harveys Lake, Hughestown, Kingston, Laflin, Larksville, Luzerne, Nanticoke, Pittston, Pringle, Sugar Notch, Swoyersville, Warrior Run, West Pittston, West Wyoming, Wilkes-Barre, Wyoming, Yatesville and the townships of Hanover, Jackson, Jenkins, Lehman, Newport, Pittston, Plains, Plymouth and Wilkes-Barre.
The authority’s website — www.wvsa.org — contains data on the stormwater mandate and a spot for fee payers to submit questions and concerns. The authority also has set up a process to challenge IA calculations and will allow property owners to start applying for credits April 1 to lower their bills if they install rain barrels or make other changes to reduce runoff.
In the Back Mountain area, the Dallas Area Municipal Authority is overseeing the stormwater mandate for Dallas Borough and Dallas and Kingston townships. That fee, also set to take effect Jan. 1, will be $60 for residential structures in 2019 and $120 more for commercial ones, but the authority is still performing analysis to establish a permanent fee amount for 2020 and subsequent years.