The Lancaster County Municipal Stormwater Financing Feasibility Study Sharing lessons learned Monica Billig Environmental Finance Center University of.

The Lancaster County Municipal Stormwater Financing Feasibility

Study

Sharing lessons learnedMonica Billig

Environmental Finance CenterUniversity of Maryland

CAC/LGAC Meeting December 5th, 2013

The EFC: Who are we?

Address the issue of “how to pay” by working across sectors

Help local and state organizations meet environmental mandates in fiscally-sound manner

Project BackgroundDrivers:

MS4 permit compliance/enforcement

Need to develop baseline stormwater program cost estimates

Improve efficiency through collaboration

Sponsored by the Lancaster County Clean Water Consortium

Funded by the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation’s Local Government Capacity Building Initiative

Technical Analysis Methodology

1. Assess each individual stormwater program

2. Identify gaps in each existing program and evaluate future needs

3. Determine where current program fits into the desired level of service and evaluate costs

4. Develop and finalize proposed stormwater program budget

5. Develop a financing strategy to support budget

Identify opportunities to collaborate

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Greatest opportunity for collaboration is through education and outreach

Lessons learned early on

Outreach is first step to putting long-term financing in place, projects on the ground

Need to know the audience to frame message

Initial Findings

Long term planning for implementing

stormwater projects

Access to available information & resources

Relaying the importance of stormwater management to community

Tracking, documentation,

and record keeping

Municipal staff training

Limited understanding of program requirements

Most important element of study

Initial assumption: Developing

cost estimates

Finding: Peer-to-peer

exchange and information

sharing

Biggest challenge

Initial assumption:

Unknown

Finding: Existing

data/baselines are

unknown

What makes a stormwater program successful?

First hand observation reveals… Leadership Extensive targeted outreach Collaboration Sound fiscal planning

…All have in common:

1. Creativity

2. Hard work

No two programs look the same…

Thank you!

For further information:

Monica BilligEnvironmental Finance Center

University of Maryland

[email protected]

http://efc.umd.edu/