Owners Of Detroit Parking Lots To Get Billed For Wastewater Treatment
By Peak Johnson
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department director, Gary Brown, would like certain residents to start helping pay for the city's $125 million annual costs for wastewater treatment.
According to michiganradio.org, the department reported that 22,000 owners of surface parking lots and “other parcels” covered in materials like concrete would need to start contributing financially for their role in wastewater.
Owners of the parcels will receive notification of the impending change soon, michiganradio.org reported. Depending on the size of their lot, some owners will have to pay $25 to $50 a month.
"They do not have a water account," Brown said to michiganradio.org. "They don't use water or sewage. But yet when it rains, the water runs off their parking lot and into our sewers. And it has to be cleaned at our wastewater treatment plant. So they're getting the benefit of a service that others are paying for and they are not."
According to The Detroit News, Detroit’s Water and Sewerage department will start to charge the 22,000 owners this coming October. Collecting nearly $10 million in drainage fees.
The move, The Detroit News reported, “is the first in a multi-phase plan that will transition all parcels to a uniform system for drainage billing within the next several years.”
“In order to get our goal accomplished of getting everyone on to the same billing system to bring fairness and equity to this system, the first thing we have to do is get everybody on the system,” Brown said in an interview with The Detroit News Editorial Board.
Brown believes that 60 percent of the 22,000 parcel owners will find themselves paying the bills, according to michiganradio.org, since many of the properties have likely been abandoned.
The parcels were identified based on assessing records and other survey data, The Detroit News reported.
Commercial, industrial, residential, and tax-exempt parcels are among the few that are being added to the drainage billing system.
“All 22,000 (who haven’t paid) — no matter the classification — will have to pay in October,” department CFO Marcus Hudson told The Detroit News.
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