Michael Drennan is the Director of Water Resources at NV5, a global engineering company with offices in San Diego. He also serves on the Board of Directors for ASCE’s San Diego Chapter. Jeff Cooper is Director of Infrastructure for NV5, and ASCE Region 9 California Past Board of Governors Member and current Treasurer.
San Diego City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera is leading a much-needed effort to generate the funding to address flooding and stormwater pollution issues in the city. Recent heavy rains have certainly brought attention to the situation, but these issues are not new. The lack of sufficient dedicated funding for the San Diego’s stormwater needs has been outlined in several reports over many years, including a report by the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst in 2021. Flooding and stormwater quality issues are the result of the city’s aging infrastructure, reduced or deferred maintenance (because of inadequate funding), and a growing backlog of critical capital projects.
San Diego is not alone. Many cities throughout California are facing similar challenges with funding stormwater infrastructure, particularly since the passage of Proposition 218 in 1996. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) produces an assessment of the nation’s infrastructure every four years in its “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.” Much of our infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life and is crumbling due to a lack of funding for repair and maintenance. The Society, which is the largest and oldest engineering organization in the country, also produces state report cards that are led by state chapter leaders. The 2019 Report Card for California gave stormwater infrastructure a letter grade of “D+”!
The Need: In 1990, the city imposed a fee of 95 cents per month per single family home, and the fee has remained unchanged since then. (For reference, you could buy a gallon of gas in California in 1990 for 74 cents!) The current budget needed to run the city’s Stormwater Department is $62 million, just for operations and maintenance. The city’s 2021 Watershed Asset Management Plan includes estimates of approximately $5.5 billion through 2040 to address the capital improvements needed to achieve flooding and stormwater quality goals.
The Solution: To its credit, the Stormwater Division has been making progress in spite of this huge funding gap. Crews from the department routinely inspect and clean the massive network of underground pipelines, particularly in anticipation of imminent storm events, to help reduce flooding. In addition, the city received approval in 2022 for $733 million in loan funds from USEPA’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA). These funds are helping to address some of the more urgent issues, but clearly more is needed.
Elo-Rivera’s willingness to tackle this chronic issue is critical. Previous efforts have been floated but have never made it to the ballot box for various reasons: polling that indicated insufficient support, competing funding measures on the ballot, or simply the lack of a champion to lead the unpopular charge of a new tax. But these latest storms may help people recognize the time has come. Taxes are unpopular, but our parents raised us to appreciate the quality of life that taxes can provide. They taught us to be grateful for the opportunity to live within a society that pooled their resources to help pay for luxuries that we all now take for granted, like paved roads, clean water, and a public education system.
A Jan. 31 Union Tribune article by David Garrick indicated that the proposed tax on the November ballot would require support from 2/3 of the city’s voters in order to comply with Proposition 218. But Proposition 218 provides other options (special assessments) that only require 50 percent approval, one where the measure is placed on the ballot by the City Council and each property owner gets a vote. In the case of the property owner ballot, the measure does not need to be timed with an official November election day, it can be initiated at any time. Proposition 218 is intended to require voter approval of tax increases, allowing the people to decide if they want to pool their resources to solve problems.
In 2018, Los Angeles County voters were provided an opportunity to consider a county-wide measure to address similar needs for stormwater funding, called Measure W. Those voters recognized the need, and that ballot measure was successful — the county is now generating $280 million annually to address stormwater mitigation for 88 cities. And in January 2024, the property owners in Manhattan Beach approved their Storm Drain Measure with a yes vote of 52.65 percent. The additional funds will be used to address their aging stormwater infrastructure. The voters of the city of San Diego may also see the importance of improving their quality of life by protecting homes, businesses, and shared spaces. Thank you again, Elo-Rivera, for your leadership of this important issue, and for giving the voters a chance to say yes. We salute you.
Update: This post has been updated to correct that the city’s Stormwater Department budget is $62 million.
No to Elo-Rivera’s just slap a tax on it policy. It’s really disheartening when elected leaders fail, like Ash St, stick taxpayers for the bill, generally unknowingly by most, and then, when the money isn’t there, when it should have been, we add another tax to do the job that should have been done in the first place. They sign PLA’s and say “protect the infrastructure” when the infrastructure was, and is ignored, in this case, by routine maintenance. So you people, who want to ride this money train, can stick a fork in it, at the city dinner table on the taxpayers expense. It’s like the insurance premium that failed so the answer is to just pay more for maybe better results.
The op-ed authors are correct in saying the city needs to invest more money in stormwater management, but this is more a matter of priority setting within the city’s multi-billion-dollar annual budget than evidence that more taxes are needed. For decades, city hall politicians have ignored the need for stormwater infrastructure improvements in favor of progressive social engineering initiatives. With long-term water supply concerns growing the city needs to join SANDAG and other local government agencies to lobby the feds for a larger share of new money available under recent legislation for the capture and reuse of stormwater as a local water resource. When we get that money, city hall politicians need to ensure that it’s used to fix our stormwater management system in a way that captures more stormwater for local consumption.
Particularly with expensive desal projects and recycled toilet water, you’d think capturing runoff and diverting the dam releases out of Hodges would be more of a first step, than taxes on the infrastructure after raising water rates.
The new storm water tax is a result of the city underfunding storm water maintenance. Given there are currently many underfunded city responsibilities will we be dragged through one mismanaged disaster after the next, in order to increase the municipal treasury? Quite the strategy to fund giveaways to wealthy institutions and developers. Developers will no longer have Development Impact Fees, so that shortfall needs to be made up somehow. The answer seems to be regressive taxes/fees like the new trash tax/fee and exploding water and sewer bills with no end in sight.
The city gave SDSU 400 million by selling the stadium site at 16 cents on the dollar, while the University sat on a 300 million dollar endowment. The auditor resigned since he did not want to lie on the ballot but the City Attorney stepped in and on the 2018 ballot lied about the stadium sites fair market value. When I called the City Attorney on it, their response was: “Buyer Beware on what they claim”. Our ballot measures are deceptive so maybe we should start there.
When it comes to municipal dollars San Diego residents are losing the competition with wealthy institutions and their lobbyists.
There are three parts to the funding needs: 1. Infrastructure improvements and repairs to prevent flooding and catastrophic failures which cause loss of property and life. 2. Water quality compliance. The City is currently not able to meet the water quality limitations in our rivers, streams, and beaches. Funding is required to build projects that treat stormwater. 3. Using stormwater as a resource and not treating like a nuisance. We need to capture, treat, and reuse stormwater to augment our potable supply, thereby reducing our imported water needs. The City is woefully underfunded for Stormwater which has never been treated like the utility is truly is.
Elo-Rivera and the rest of the City Council, including the Mayor, should either resign or be recalled for failure to do their job regarding storm drains. Anyone who agreed to a budget that only cleans the storm drains TWICE A CENTURY (cleaning only 4 segments per year of 200 total segments, per Todd Snyder, Stormwater Director) shouldn’t be running a lemonade stand, much less a city of over a million people. Elo-Rivera thinks we have enough money to do the due diligence, legal negotiations, and startup costs to purchase an electric utility. Why wasn’t that money spent on stormwater maintenance instead of trying to get him noticed by the Sacramento overlords? The mandated funding DOES NOT ELIMINATE the possibility of The City adding additional funds from the budget to maintain the system – it only prevents the politicians from wasting those funds on boondoggles, like buying power companies. It is time for a reckoning, but in the political arena, not taxes. We need councilpersons who will actually do their jobs to maintain the city they were elected to run, instead of using their positions merely as stepping stones to blindly feed at the public trough in Sacramento.