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City engineer pitches 10-year stormwater monitoring network and fee-change option to fund it
Summary
City engineer Holly Olson and a stormwater consultant presented a proposal for a hydro-meteorological monitoring network, modeling platform (AUGWA), and potential changes to the city stormwater fee to generate funding; staff said the plan is in the proposed budget and would roll out weather stations first.
Holly Olson, Montgomery’s city engineer, and a city-hired stormwater consultant presented a technical plan to expand stormwater monitoring and modeling across the city and suggested fee changes to fund the work.
Olson described a staged program the city has proposed in its budget: deploy weather stations first, add stream gauges the following year, and implement an automated watershed-analysis platform (referred to in the presentation as “AUGWA”) for faster modeling. The presentation included a 10-year implementation footprint with 27 watershed models, about 24 weather stations and 17 stream gauges, and a planning-level cost of roughly $1,980,000.
The consultant described recent analyses that show how concentrated, back-to-back storms increase discharge and flood risk. He cited a Colosseum Boulevard event in which 6.9 inches of rain fell in about three and a half hours and said that rainfall equated to a roughly 500-year event on a common atlas. The consultant said that using the automated platform would reduce time and cost for typical development reviews: a development review that previously cost about $28,500 and took 90–120 days could be handled for roughly $2,500 in two to three days with the automated system and local gauges.
Olson and the consultant walked the council through two funding paths discussed in the presentation. Alabama law changed in 2014 to allow municipalities to levy stormwater fees; Montgomery passed a local ordinance in 2016 that currently assesses residential parcels a flat $10 fee and calculates commercial fees on heated-and-cooled square footage. The consultant showed how switching to impervious-area measurement for commercial parcels could raise additional revenue. Using a large retail example, the heated-and-cooled square footage produced a stormwater fee of about $1,200 under current practice; if parking and other impervious surfaces were included the fee would be larger (the consultant’s calculation for an example site would have been about $4,200 before the statutory $3,000 commercial cap).
Olson said the monitoring-and-modeling program is included in the proposed budget and that the city intends to begin with weather stations, add stream gauges the following year and integrate the modeling software as the network expands. She told the council staff would prioritize locations with known flooding problems; councilmembers asked that specific neighborhoods be included in early deployments.
Councilmembers pressed for timeline and near-term relief. The consultant said the automated platform provides quicker turnaround for development reviews and problem diagnosis but that neighborhood-level modeling and pond-sizing would still require some engineering—model development for a watershed can take several months. Olson estimated model development and data collection for new gauges would take months but said having weather stations and gauges in place would improve situational awareness and help staff prioritize mitigation.
No formal funding decision was taken in the work session; Olson said the proposal is in the administration’s proposed budget and would proceed if the council approves the budget and any fee adjustments.
