Every Livermore property is charged an Urban Runoff Fee under the “Fixed Charges and/or Special Assessments” section of its property tax bill. The City of Livermore has charged these fees since 1992 to fund its stormwater management program.

What is a Stormwater Management Program?

Impervious surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and roofs prevent rain from soaking into the soil. To prevent flooding, most cities have storm drain systems to channel runoff into local waterways. This runoff can pick up pollutants along the way like automobile fluids, litter, and sediment. It is the City of Livermore’s responsibility to maintain our storm drain system and reduce pollutants from entering our local creeks and streams.

What do Urban Runoff Fees Pay for?

Urban Runoff Fees are an “enterprise fund”. This means that revenue collected from these fees can only be used for these purposes:

• Meeting regulatory requirements set by the Alameda County Clean Water Program and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program. Learn more about how the City of Livermore is meeting these requirements.
  
  
• Funding maintenance, operation, and improvement to City-owned stormwater infrastructure. This infrastructure includes 7,000 storm drains and 225 miles of stormwater pipes.

Urban Runoff Fees do not fund the expansion of our storm drain system to serve new developments. Developers pay separate storm drainage fees to cover the cost of any infrastructure necessary to connect new developments to our existing system.

How Much are Urban Runoff Fees?

All properties that discharge stormwater into the City-owned stormwater system are charged an Urban Runoff Fee. The fee is based on the estimated amount of impervious area on the property and is calculated using the formulas below.

Bridging the Gap

In 1987, revisions to the federal Clean Water Act required cities to begin reducing pollutants in their stormwater runoff. Many California cities created Urban Runoff Fees in the early 1990s to cover the cost of meeting these new requirements.

Over the last thirty years, pollution prevention requirements have only grown stronger. However, California cities do not have a straightforward way to increase their Urban Runoff Fees to cover rising stormwater management costs. As a result, many cities use their General Fund (property and sales taxes) to supplement the inadequate funding their Urban Runoff Fees provide.

The City of Livermore needs to spend $13 million per year to fully address all its stormwater system maintenance needs. However, currently the City only receives $1.1 million per year from Urban Runoff Fees. Approximately $2 million from the General Fund is used to supplement stormwater management funding each year. Visit www.livermoreassets.net to learn more. 

Free viewers are required for some of the attached documents.
They can be downloaded by clicking on the icons below.

Acrobat Reader Windows Media Player Word Viewer Excel Viewer PowerPoint Viewer