A House committee Thursday appeared poised to approve a development fee aimed at stemming the tide of pollution emptying into the Chesapeake Bay from stormwater runoff.
The House Environmental Matters Committee spent more than four hours late Wednesday afternoon making changes to the Chesapeake Bay Green Fund. Under the bill, new residential and commercial development statewide would be charged a fee based on the amount of impervious surface created. Impervious surfaces such as parking lots do not allow stormwater to soak into the ground. Instead, the water, polluted with chemicals from the surface, ends up in storm drains and waterways.
The committee expected to vote on the bill late Thursday, and the full House of Delegates could take up the bill during a special Saturday session.
Based on a recent head count, the bill appears to have the support of the majority of the House of Delegates, but its fate is uncertain in the Senate where lawmakers strictly have enforced a ban on all new programs this year.
The Green Fund fee for residential projects varies from $100 for less than 1,000 square feet of new impervious surface to $1,500 for projects that create 10,000 square feet or more. Commercial developments would be charged $1 per square foot of new impervious surface.
Projects in counties with high unemployment rates would be exempt from the fee, as would projects that receive aggressive incentive packages from the county in which they choose to locate.
“The rural counties don?t want to have this in any way impact economic development,” said Del. Maggie McIntosh, D-Baltimore City, who chairs the committee and is the lead sponsor of the bill. McIntosh said projects that counties aggressively recruited would be exempt, but “if [the counties] don?t do anything, [the projects are] not exempt.”
Del. Anthony O?Donnell, R-St. Mary?s, said the bill?s goals were “laudable,” but said he had a difficult time supporting a bill that creates a new state program with a $1.3 billion budget deficit on the horizon.
“We don?t know yet what the fiscal impact will be,” O?Donnell said. “Right now we?re crafting majorpublic-policy changes.”
Thirty percent of the funds collected by the Green Fund would return to local governments to pay for stormwater mitigation projects and other pollution control projects. The rest of the money would go to the state environment, agriculture and planning departments to be used as seed money for larger environmental projects.
