ion of natural waterways. While the city currently operates a combined sewer system, the method of funding this operation and the associated costs for treatment has been determined to be outdated by current standards. The city’s proposed stormwater utility will proportionally bill users for their use of the system and will encourage activities that promote better stormwater management and lessen the burdens of the system, making the existing infrastructure more adaptable to severe rain events.
The city used low-altitude, high-resolution aerial photography to determine the hard surface area on each property. The city will perform aerial flyovers every three years to update the hard surface database.
Using aerial photography is the best possible way to measure each property’s individual hard surface area. However, mapping of aerial photographs does have a degree of inherent error. The hard surface area on each property was therefore reduced by 100 square feet to account for error in the measurements.
The image below is an example of aerial photography. The area outlined in blue represents the hard surface area. The pop-up block indicates the Billable Hard Surface Area of this property is 91,215 sq. ft.
To view your property go to: https://royaloak.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=88ea895ad7f34bdb885f3994d431f972
Royal Oak has a "combined" sewer system, which means that all the stormwater from rain and snow is mixed with all the sanitary sewage from private sewer leads into one pipe. Parts of the city do have separate stormwater pipes and sanitary sewer pipes, but these all ultimately drain to the same county drain and are combined. This means that the city has to pay to treat all the sewage AND stormwater that enters the system.
Roads and public rights-of-way maintained by the city are exempt from the stormwater utility fee because they function as part of the stormwater collection and conveyance system. City-owned properties such as parks and parking lots are subject to the stormwater utility fee.
While stormwater is a result of rain and snowmelt, the stormwater fee is not related to how much rain falls on your property, but rather the facilities used to manage stormwater such as sewers, manholes, catch basins and wastewater treatment. The more hard surface a property has, the more it uses the stormwater system components.
The settlement was based upon language in the Drain Code that requires the city to bill for its portion of the debt on the Kuhn RTF on an ad valorem basis. However, billing for stormwater costs based upon the amount of stormwater that a property contributes to the stormwater system is more rational and more equitable than billing for stormwater costs based upon the amount of water consumed at that property.