Marietta DJ: Cobb debates which is worse, flood damage or collecting money to prevent and pay for it
neillh...@earthlink.net
Some flood victims say Cobb stormwater fee won’t help
- By Hunter Riggall hrig...@mdjonline.com
- By Hunter Riggall hrig...@mdjonline.com
Ed and Wanda Hullender stand outside their home, holding a photo of a headwall destroyed in the September 2021 flooding. The new headwall can be seen on the left, downhill from them.
Some flood victims say Cobb stormwater fee won’t help
The stormwater fee proposal before the Cobb Board of Commissioners was precipitated by the 2021 flooding that ravaged parts of east Cobb. But some of the homeowners hit hardest by that flood are opposed to the fee.
Why?
Because they’ve already spent thousands of dollars, out of their own pockets, on stormwater infrastructure.
The fee will be presented to commissioners at their 1:30 p.m. work session Tuesday.
Cobb County maintains some stormwater infrastructure on private property, but only if it’s shown on the surveyor’s plat. In many cases, victims of the 2021 flood had to pay to fix infrastructure themselves.
Among them were Ed and Wanda Hullender. Their home is on a slope, with a creek running behind it. The creek runs through a large pipe underneath the back lawn and garden, bookended by large concrete headwalls.
The Hullenders moved into their home in the 1980s and had never had a flood until that night in September 2021.
The volume exceeded the pipe’s capacity, and started spilling across the yard above.
“It was terrifying, because the water kept rising,” Ed Hullender said.
It inched closer and closer to their house, but fortunately never entered it.
The next morning, they discovered their grill had been washed 100 yards downstream. Ed had to dig it out of the mud.
The flood ripped the bottom headwall off, scattering pieces of concrete in the creek bed. The upper headwall was cracked. Both were replaced. The pipe itself survived, but the couple was told it would likely fail soon, so they replaced it, too. They also added rip rap — large rocks to prevent erosion, around the headwalls. All told, it cost them $80,000.
“We talked to the county, and we got no help at all,” Hullender said, because the county had no record of the pipe.
“It was, to say the least, traumatic for us,” he added.
‘Drained’
Rebecca and Orion Smith also got no relief from the county after the 150-foot-long pipe under their backyard was crushed by the 2021 flood, leading to the flooding of their basement.
They too were told their pipe wasn’t shown on the surveyor’s plat.
“There is absolutely no way … that our house could have been built without this pipe already being installed,” Rebecca Smith said. “And the pipe crosses three properties. How do you get three people to agree to have a pipe across three properties? It doesn’t happen.”
Given the size of the pipe, Smith had trouble finding a replacement, and finding someone to install it. It’s not the type of thing you can buy at Home Depot, or get a typical contractor to perform.
“That’s not a normal repair any homeowner should ever have to deal with or accept,” Smith said.
What’s more, the stream that runs through the Smiths’ yard originates from a retention pond at the county’s Sewell Mill Library, county stream maps show.
“If they’re (the county) not keeping care of the retention pond up there, it all comes downstream to us,” Smith said.
The Smiths’ troubles are ongoing. Recently, a small sinkhole, about three feet in diameter, formed in the backyard over the pipe. The Smiths are having someone come out to try to determine where the seal on the pipe is failing.
While the Smiths have since bought flood insurance, their policy wouldn’t cover the cost of replacing the pipe again. If that happens, they’ll likely be forced to move.
“I’m so just mentally and emotionally drained dealing with this,” Smith said. “... It’s just tiring.”
The fee has also faced criticism from homeowner’s associations who already spend money on maintaining stormwater infrastructure, like detention ponds.
In some cases, it’s more than a little pond. Debbie Fisher, a member of the Cobb Board of Elections, lives in the Loch Highland subdivision, which surrounds a lake that’s dammed at Mabry Road.
The Loch Highland homeowner’s association, Fisher said, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to dredge the lake, which has too much silt in its bed.
Fisher said the silt comes from runoff and streambank erosion upstream, along with yard debris being blown into storm drains.
“The more silt you have in your lake, the less water you store, the less storage you have, the more propensity for, in a rain event, for it to flood,” Fisher said. “Because there’s nowhere for the water to go.”
The HOA has been advised that the dam spilling over would be deadly for people downstream.
Fisher and other Loch Highland residents have advocated for a stormwater fee in the past, but Fisher didn’t support last year’s proposal, saying it was “irresponsibly written.” It wouldn’t help HOAs that maintain private lakes, she said.
County’s response
Judy Jones, the county’s water director, said the county’s practice of maintaining private stormwater infrastructure dates to the 1980s, when the county was receiving an increasing number of complaints about pipe failures on private property.
“Over time, there was more political pressure to do something to help them out,” Jones said. “And slowly, there were times when the county would go in and help things.”
Cobb unofficially adopted the practice that, if a pipe was shown on the original plat, the county would maintain it. That was never codified as policy, however.
East Cobb’s Hill Wright, who helped organize and advocate on behalf of the 2021 flood victims, believes the county lost records.
“They like the idea of a fee, but they didn’t want to take on the responsibility for actually fixing all the infrastructure that’s out there,” Wright said.
In response, Jones said she’s not aware of any records being lost.
In some subdivisions, she said, the plat was approved, only showing roads and water and sewer lines. Then, after approval from the county, developers installed drainage pipes during or after the construction of homes, unbeknownst to the county.
“In that case, because the county didn’t inspect that and … most of the time, those (pipes) were not put in to county standards, those we will not maintain,” Jones said. “So it’s not that the county lost records, it’s that it was put in without following the same procedures as the pipes that were platted.”
But homeowners who were left holding the bag aren’t convinced.
“People won’t be so gullible as to believe that $5 a month will cover the flooding issues,” Hullender said. “Because it won’t, I guarantee you, and it’s just not me. There are plenty of parts of this county that have similar problems to us.”
Other flood victims feel differently, though, like Bob and Carol Collins, whose basement flooded in the 2021 storm.
“I am so frugal,” Carol Collins said. “But I would not mind paying $5 if it would help all of us.”
Her husband, meanwhile, is neutral on the question.
“I’ve been around long enough to know there’s going to be people for it and people against it, and there ain’t no easy answer,” Bob Collins said. “… I’m completely neutral. I understand the need for investing in infrastructure, but it means we pay more. But, you know, that’s life.”
Residents can weigh in on the fee at two public hearings. The first is scheduled for Nov. 12 at 9 a.m. The second is scheduled for Nov. 20 at 6 p.m. Commissioners plan to vote on the fee at their Nov. 20 meeting, after the second public hearing.
Previous
Brazilian steakhouse coming to Cumberland Mall
Fogo De Chão, a popular Brazilian steakhouse, is coming to C…
Next Up
Cobb PARKS Fall Festival of Fun, haunted house kicks off Sat…
The county’s annual Fall Festival of Fun returns to Jim Mill…
Rising Water: Are you ready to pay a $4.75 monthly stormwater fee?
- By Hunter Riggall hrig...@mdjonline.com
- 3 hrs ago
- 10 min to read
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Editor’s Note
This is the final installment of a three-part series. Read parts 1 and 2 at the links below.
Rising water: Stormwater tests Cobb’s aging infrastructure
- By Hunter Riggall hrig...@mdjonline.com
- 8 min to read
Rising Water: How development, stronger storms increase runoff in Cobb
- By Hunter Riggall hrig...@mdjonline.com
- 9 min to read
The consensus is that Cobb County’s stormwater infrastructure is overwhelmed, aging and in need of repair.
But how do you pay for it?
That’s the question at the heart of the county’s stormwater fee proposal, which would collect millions of dollars for stormwater repairs, maintenance and new infrastructure.
If the fee doesn’t pass, Cobb County officials say the stormwater department will continue to face a funding shortfall, unable to maintain existing infrastructure. As the volume of runoff continues to increase due to development and stronger storms, the costs will be borne by individual property owners — and their insurers — who are threatened by flooding.
“Not doing anything will only exacerbate the issue,” Democratic Cobb Commissioner Monique Sheffield said last year. “And it will be exponentially worse.”
Commissioners will be briefed on the proposal at a work session next week and are expected to vote on the fee in November.
If the fee passes, the cost of improving infrastructure will be shared among all property owners. Many residents want no fee at all, saying the county should pay for it another way.
Some flood victims say Cobb stormwater fee won’t help
Some flood victims say Cobb stormwater fee won’t help
“I understand what is trying to be achieved but I think we can achieve it other ways,” Republican Commissioner Keli Gambrill said.
There are other objections. Some don’t trust the county to spend it wisely. Or, they question how much it would reduce the impact of flooding, given how much infrastructure is privately maintained.
“Why do we need a rain tax if the county’s not going to do anything?” said Ed Hullender, an east Cobb resident whose backyard flooded in 2021, and had to pay for pipe repairs.
The fee, which aims to raise revenue to reduce the impact of runoff, would charge each homeowner in unincorporated Cobb $4.75 a month. Nonresidential properties — such as businesses, churches and schools — would pay a rate based on their amount of impervious surface, which prevents water from soaking into the ground.
If passed by the Board of Commissioners, homeowners in unincorporated Cobb will pay a $4.75 monthly stormwater fee. Nonresidential properties will pay a calculated fee based on their amount of impervious surfaces.
Philip Clements
For years, the county’s stormwater department has had a backlog of roughly 100 pipe repairs and sinkholes that it has failed to catch up on.
“Every time we repair one we get another call,” county Water Director Judy Jones said last year.
Fifty-year old pipes built in the 1970s and 1980s are failing more frequently. The county also owns hundreds of detention and retention ponds which it has “never properly funded,” Jones said.
There’s broad consensus that Cobb needs to improve its systems for managing runoff. But the county is divided over what to do about it.
“Cobb County, I think, desperately needs some infrastructure improvement, like most places,” said Bob Collins, an east Cobb homeowner whose basement flooded three years ago. “… Issue is, how do you pay for it? And there’s never a good answer to that one.”
Fee details
If approved, the fee would be charged to property owners in unincorporated Cobb and the city of Mableton. The county maintains Mableton’s stormwater infrastructure.
Homeowners would pay a flat rate of $4.75 a month. Owners of nonresidential property would pay $4.75 for every 3,700 square feet of impervious surface on their lot.
Impervious surfaces include buildings, decks, driveways, parking lots, patios, streets, tennis courts and walkways. Pervious pavers, pervious pavement and green roofs would be considered 60% impervious.
A dog swims through floodwaters in Vinings after Hurricane Helene caused widespread flooding in September 2024.
Staff - File
Customers of Cobb’s water system already pay for stormwater infrastructure, which is funded with revenue from water and sewer bills, charged based on water consumption.
County staff have said a more equitable system would charge residents based on their impervious surface.
A property’s water consumption has little to do with its impact on stormwater runoff, since there are three distinct and separate systems: the water system which carries drinking water to homes, sewer which carries wastewater to treatment plants and the stormwater system which channels runoff to waterways.
County staff have said the proposed fee could provide savings to businesses like restaurants, which consume lots of water but don’t have as much impervious surfaces. But properties which don’t use as much water but have large parking lots — such as churches and big-box stores — would see their bills go up.
The new fee would show up on property owners’ water bills and create a dedicated funding stream for stormwater projects.
While Mableton relies on the county for stormwater services, the cities of Acworth, Austell, Kennesaw, Powder Springs and Smyrna charge their own stormwater fee, ranging from $3.73 to $5.50 a month per residential property. The city of Marietta does not have a fee.
Proposals to create a stormwater fee for unincorporated Cobb go back decades, but each effort washed out. The idea was discussed during the tenures of former Commission Chairs Sam Olens and Tim Lee.
Residents protested proposed stormwater fee changes at a Cobb Board of Commissioners meeting in March 2024.
Staff — File
The latest proposal was considered in the spring of last year. It was precipitated by the September 2021 flooding that swamped east Cobb. Facing millions in damages, residents asked if a dedicated revenue stream for stormwater could have helped the county avoid the drainage and runoff problems not addressed prior to the flood.
Cobb’s Republican commissioners, JoAnn Birrell and Keli Gambrill, opposed the last fee. The Cobb Chamber of Commerce also asked the commission to delay the vote.
“We fear that the current proposal will discourage private commercial development, harming our community’s ability to attract jobs and investment,” the chamber wrote in a letter at the time.
Meanwhile, Republican Randy Scamihorn, then serving as chairman of the Cobb school board, slammed the proposal in a blog post sent to Cobb parents.
“Our schools could have been made legally exempt, but they weren’t,” Scamihorn wrote at the time. “... The reality is that every school dollar taken for stormwater management is a dollar taken away from our children’s futures.
At a meeting last March, a parade of 30 residents spoke out against the fee. Still, the Democratic majority on the commission appeared poised to approve it.
That is, until then-Commissioner Jerica Richardson expressed hesitancy. After Richardson wavered, the board voted to table the proposal for a few months. Then, last July, Chairwoman Lisa Cupid announced the proposal was being tabled indefinitely.
Now, the fee is back, being considered as part of the county’s annual code amendment package.
The new proposal differs from last year’s mainly in how residential fees are calculated. The previous version used a tiered fee structure based on each home’s amount of impervious surface, ranging from $2 to $12. The new proposal scraps that system in favor of a flat fee for homeowners.
Since the water and sewer rates would no longer be used to fund stormwater maintenance, the county would reduce water and sewer rates to offset a portion of the balance.
The county has two separate rates for water customers: one for customers in unincorporated Cobb and Mableton, and lower rates for customers in the rest of the cities. The latter group pays lower rates because the county does not provide stormwater services in those cities. If the stormwater fee is adopted, all customers will pay the lower “in-city” rates.
If Cobb’s stormwater fee is adopted, all water customers will pay the lower “in-city” rates, shown in the middle column.
Cobb County
Property owners could also apply for a reduction in their fee if they improve the property in ways that “reduce the negative impact on the stormwater utility.”
The county has released a proposed credit manual detailing the discounts.
Jones previously said approximately 6,700 properties in unincorporated Cobb contribute runoff to the county’s stormwater system but don’t pay for it, because they get their water from a different municipal water system.
Under the new system, properties in unincorporated Cobb that receive water from a different utility will receive a county bill charging the stormwater fee only.
Properties exempt from the fee include undeveloped land, railroad tracks, county and state roads, airport runways, and “any property whereby 100 percent of the stormwater runoff is contained or infiltrated on the property.”
Dobbins Air Reserve Base is exempt, as the base manages its own runoff, and has its own stormwater permit with the state.
The funding gap
This fiscal year, just 3% of the water fund’s $286 million budget — $9.5 million — was set aside for the stormwater division.
“My concern, if this fee doesn’t pass, is really just having the money to even keep up with the infrastructure we have today,” Jones, the county water director, told the MDJ.
Cobb is not unique in lacking the funds it needs for stormwater infrastructure.
A 2022 needs assessment by the Water Environment Federation, an industry group, estimated the stormwater funding gap across the U.S. was $6.2 billion.
“It is a challenge here in this region. It is a challenge nationally,” said Katherne Attebery, stormwater planning manager for the Atlanta Regional Commission.
In 2024, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave Georgia a C- in stormwater on its annual infrastructure report card.
“Progress has not kept up with threats from increased runoff and pollutant loads,” the report card reads. “Changing land use and development supercharge those hazards. … Consistent, flexible funding mechanisms have not been established to meet needs.”
Five Cobb cities charge a stormwater utility fee. Marietta does not.
Philip Clements
Other ways to fund it
About 40% of water districts in metro Atlanta have a stormwater utility fee, according to Attebery.
Across Georgia, 78 jurisdictions charge a stormwater fee. Across the U.S., there are more than 2,100.
Other Georgia governments fund stormwater through general fund revenue (property taxes), or use Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax dollars, Attebery said.
Those other funding sources have drawbacks, though. Stormwater departments reliant on general fund dollars have to compete with other government departments.
A Western Kentucky University survey of stormwater utilities nationwide notes that “stormwater must compete with fixing potholes, putting more police on the street, and other community priorities.”
Nationally, the average fee for a single family home was $6.19, the survey found, while the median was $5.
Portions of Columns Drive, off Johnson Ferry Road and near the Chattahoochee River, after flooding in September 2021. Several cars were abandoned after being disabled by floodwaters.
Thomas Hartwell
“Stormwater is the forgotten infrastructure since every drainage system works perfectly when it is not raining,” the survey report reads. “Community officials want to spend taxpayer money on immediate priorities, and until the next flood these priorities do not include stormwater.”
SPLOST revenue, meanwhile, is mostly limited in Georgia to capital projects, and cannot be used for operating costs.
That’s why dedicated fees “provide higher and more reliable revenue than other funding sources,” Attebery said.
What about the water transfer?
Another criticism of the fee centers around Cobb’s practice of transferring some water and sewer revenue, collected on water bills, to the county general fund.
The transfer rate is capped by law at 10%. The county began transferring water funds in 1998, and at one point, the transfer was at the maximum 10%.
The transfer was implemented in part to collect some revenue from properties that are exempt from property taxes, but still benefit from county infrastructure. It’s also been used to keep the millage rate low.
There’s consensus on the commission that the transfer should be eliminated, and the county has been slowly weaning its budget off it, reducing it by 1% annually.
In the current fiscal year, the transfer rate is 4%, about $11.3 million. If the slow reduction continues, the transfer will be eliminated in fiscal 2030.
But Commissioner JoAnn Birrell, for one, says she can’t vote for a stormwater fee while the transfer exists.
“To me, it’s not right to charge people on their water bill, water fees and then move it to the general fund for other uses, and it’s needed in water,” Birrell said.
County staff say eliminating the transfer will not be enough to adequately fund stormwater infrastructure, however, and that this year’s transfer represents less than $300,000 of stormwater funding.
What it would fund
All revenue from the fee would go into a new stormwater fund, which “shall be used exclusively to pay for county stormwater expenses and improvements.”
Jones said infrastructure will never be able to withstand a 100-year flood, but the fee would enable Cobb to meet its current obligations and plan for the future.
The fee could also enable the county to issue bonds to fund stormwater maintenance, backed by the fee revenue.
This table from Cobb County lists the services the county would add or expand if the stormwater fee is implemented.
Cobb County
To fund the $9.5 million fiscal year 2026 stormwater budget, the county says the fee would only need to be $2.57.
But the county wants to increase the stormwater budget by $7.8 million to fund pipe repairs on residential properties and under roads, maintain and repair detention ponds, hire more staff and purchase new equipment, and explore “future regional stormwater detention projects.”
Jones said the fee would enable the county to close the repair backlog and take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to stormwater.
“People have a broken pipe on their property and they want us to come fix it, and we have to tell them, ‘Well, we have 100 projects in front of you, it’s going to be a couple years before we get to you,’” Jones told the MDJ. “That’s not acceptable. Nobody wants to hear that.”
Proactive measures would include lining old pipes to reinforce them before they fail, and mowing the hundreds of detention ponds the county owns to prevent them from getting overgrown, which obstructs the flow of water.
Per Jones, there are roughly 3,500 detention and retention ponds in Cobb. The county is responsible for about 275 of them.
Cobb has long allowed developers of new subdivisions to transfer ownership of detention ponds to the county. Jones has said she’s not aware of any other county with that practice. If the fee proposal is approved, the county would no longer accept ownership of new ponds.
A fee or a tax?
Many critics of the fee have labeled it a “rain tax” and said it would strain residents’ already tight budgets. So which is it?
In 2004, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled a stormwater fee based on impervious surface is a fee, not a tax.
Residents opposed to the Cobb Board of Commissioners approving a stormwater fee at a meeting in March 2024.
Staff - File
Taxes, the court found, are typically based on the ability to pay — pegged to income or property values — regardless of what services are provided. Fees, on the other hand, “a charge for a particular service provided.”
Just last week, the high court upheld that precedent in a separate case challenging Athens-Clarke County’s stormwater fee, the legal news outlet Law360 reported.
What’s next?
The stormwater fee, along with the rest of the code amendment package, will be presented to commissioners at their work session Tuesday at 1:30 p.m.
Residents can weigh in at two public hearings. The first is scheduled for Nov. 12 at 9 a.m. The second is scheduled for Nov. 20 at 6 p.m. Commissioners plan to vote on the fee at their Nov. 20 meeting, after the second public hearing.
Last spring, Jerica Richardson was the swing vote that led to the fee being tabled. Her former district is now represented by Democratic Commissioner Erick Allen.
Allen acknowledged his vote is crucial for the fee’s passage, and said he advocated for the new proposal to be a flat fee, which he thinks is less confusing for residents. He stopped short of saying he would vote for the fee, but said the county has to do something.
“We’ve got a lot of public comment, we’ve got time to work and perfect it, but I do not support doing nothing,” Allen told the MDJ. “... We don’t have the resources currently to maintain the infrastructure.”
Whether the fee passes likely hinges on whether the commission’s three Democrats are united.
“There are several examples of localities that did not address their stormwater infrastructure, and now the bill before them is huge, I’m talking billions of dollars, that they have to pay for, because they did not take the steps to address it when they could have,” Cobb Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said last year.
When the fee was last debated, commissioners who supported it said that the county had to do something, even if the remedy is imperfect.
“This is not a problem that’s going to fix itself, and we’re really behind the eight ball, unfortunately, in dealing with this,” Sheffield said last year. “It’s just going to require us making tough decisions, understanding it’s not something that’s going to get fixed overnight.”