Utilities: Smart Billing (Rainwater Tax in Richmond VA)

At the same time they tax you for square footage of “of impervious surface per property” that you own, they outlaw gravel driveways as “unsightly”

That's "smart" thinking and of course all great "smart" minds think alike. I was wondering exactly the same thing. But from what I can gather it seems that this is a ~~flat tax~~ err... ~~hidden property tax assessment~~ a fixed "runoff fee" that is levied regardless of one's "impervious surface" infractions.

Because it's not really about the "runoff" per se but about the fact that rain lands on your property, and it's go to go somewhere, right?

So even if you covered your property with PVC and collected all rainwater, then boiled it so that it all went back into the atmosphere as steam.....

Well.... it would still come down as rainfall on some impervious surface somewhere and still become runoff.

That's what we call "smart taxation for smart bureaucrats."

Twice!? They used the word “Smart” twice in the same article?

Those evil bastards! Don't they know there is a shortage of intelligence and we need to ration?

Do you if they happened to buy dumbass offset credits for their shameful plundering our precious resource? I didn't use the hyphen in dumb-ass because they are.

Do over:

Do you know if they happened to buy dumbass offset credits for their shameful plundering our precious resource?

I didn’t use the hyphen in dumb-ass because they are.

No, its a tax on runoff. And honestly, if it forces folks to think a bit more about runoff when they develop, that's a good thing. There are several areas of my city where no thought was given to it at all, far too much of the area has been paved and hardened that even the shortest of cloudbursts can cause flooding, and its all due to over-development, not anything else.

The funny thing is not so much the tax, but the things they are going to reward people for doing.

Lets say people really jump on the rain barrel idea... and honestly its free water, so its not really such a bad idea for an individual to capture at least some of that rain into barrels and use it for watering your lawn or washing your car or other things that don't require water to be fit for human consumption to do during the summer. All well and good right???

Well not exactly, you get enough folks doing that, and you wind up affecting the water tables, because less water is being fed back into the rivers and streams, which leads you to larger problems.. not enough water downriver, drought etc. Not so much an issue in VA, but out west many peoples lives have been ended over feuds over water and water rights.

>>>> No, its a tax on runoff. And honestly, if it forces folks to think a bit more about runoff when they develop, that’s a good thing <<<<

While I understand that your issues are a bit different, my comments pertain to a rainfall tax on individual homeowners in Richmond VA.

Not one penny of this covert tax will be applied to storm drains.

The funds will not be used to entice shopping center developers to provide for better rainwater handling.

Period.

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