Stormwater Utility Fees: A North Carolina Affordability Analysis

Stormwater fee affordability is a rarely discussed factor when examining the impacts of stormwater utilities. This study seeks to expand on the understanding of the household level financial impact that stormwater utilities have in a community. Specifically, it evaluates how the affordability of stormwater fees differs across municipalities and US Census block groups in North Carolina. We estimated individual parcel cost-burden by calculating the annual share of a parcel’s stormwater fee to its assessed parcel value. A fixed-factor regression then compared cost-burdens across municipalities and block groups to determine whether the affordability of household level stormwater fees varied by location. We find that cost-burden varies significantly between both municipalities and block groups, with block groups being a much stronger determining factor for high levels of cost-burden.Master of City and Regional Plannin