Pounding the pavement for payment – An update on stormwater user fees in Canada

The City of Kitchener (in Ontario, Canada) began funding its stormwater management program with revenue generated by a stormwater user fee in January 2011, replacing property tax as the primary funding mechanism. At the time, there were only 16 stormwater user fees in the country, compared to over 1,100 in the United States. Kitchener’s user fee was the first of its kind in Canada with individual property charges based on the amount of impervious area, determined using a rigorous sampling methodology and rate structure made popular in the U.S. Over the past 10 years, the number of Canadian user fees has nearly tripled, and a large amount of residential impervious area statistics have been compiled using the same sampling methodology. This presentation gives an overview of the current status of stormwater user fees in Canada, including a new taxonomy to distinguish the various billing methods and rate structures. In addition, residential impervious area characteristics are summarized, and comparative statistics benchmarked against other municipalities in North America.

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 Click here to watch recorded presentation on YouTube.