RINCON — The City of Rincon is getting ready to wade into a stormwater management plan.

On Jan. 25, Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Kirkland and Councilmembers Freddy Long and Ann Daniels listened to a presentation by Wayne Burcham of Geosyntec, a consulting and engineering firm that helps clients address environmental and infrastructure problems.

“Why do you need a stormwater management program? Because you have a sewer treatment plant,” Burcham said.

Burcham told Kirkland, Long and Daniels that the council needs to come up with a monthly stormwater fee for Rincon residents that will be used to pay the costs of maintaining and upgrading Rincon’s sewer-related equipment.

“If you have a fee that is stable, you can reduce the overall costs,” Burcham said. “Some of the things that you guys are paying for you are having to pay for year after year by putting a Band-Aid on it. If you really fixed some of these things, it would reduce costs.

“It’s just like car. If you never did preventive maintainance on car and waited until it broke down, it costs a lot more to fix.”

Burcham also warned the council that Rincon needs a stormwater management plan to reduce the “impacts of urbanization.”

“(Urbanization is) causing changes in the land use,” he said. “Changes in land use causes increases in stormwater discharges, volumes in pollutions loads go up and  it can cause sanitary sewer overflows.

“You are seeing right now a lot of erosion problems. You are also getting put on some FEMA lists for places of particular concern and that short of thing. It all has to do with urbanization.”

Burcham said environmental problems stem from replacing trees and grass with pavement, which forces water to end up in the sewer system instead of soaking into the ground. The water picks up pollutants along the way, he said.

“Because of that, you guys have to have these (state and federal government) permits and it costs money to manage those permits,” Burcham said. “Stormwater requires money to balance the economic impacts. If we just ignored the environment — a lot of people come here for the environment.

“Georgia is natural, evironmental, historical, archaeological and recreational resources — we are kind of borrowing them from our kids right now. We want to pass them on in good condition or at least do what we can ...”

The city council is planning to form a stormwater utility that would establish a formal plan of action and implementation strategy to secure funding to operate a stormwater program. According to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, it is the most fair, equitable and stable method for funding a stormwater program.

In 2017, there were 62 stormwater utilities in the state known to charge fees. Hinesville, Garden City, Statesboro and Richmond Hill are included in this group

Georgia’s average monthly stormwater fee is $4.25.

Stormwater utility fee structures vary. Some charge a flat rate for all properties regardless of the amount of impervious surface they contain. Others use a tiered flat fee based on the amount of impervious surface.

“Even if the city didn’t do anything — didn’t place any money in stormwater management — it’s going to cost money,” Burcham said. “Failures will occur and they are required to be repaired. You will have fines, consent orders and lack of discoounts for homeowners insurance.”

City Manager John Klimm recommended that Rincon’s stormwater fee be $1.50 per month for single-family homes.

“The reason that we recommended that to you is not that we believe that is what we will ultimately need, but this is a new program and our citizens need to be educated in terms of what we are doing, why we are doing it and, at the same time, I am mindful that we have made (fee) increases in other areas. For example, our commercial fire rates are going up this coming year,” he said.

The council discussed the stormwater fee further during a Monday night workshop.