LAWTON – Consultants Freese & Nichols have presented city officials with an alternative method of calculating stormwater and drainage rates.
The city’s current fee structure is meter-based. F&N Management Consultant Trey Shanks appeared April 23 before the City Council’s Fee Committee to explain a rate structure based instead on “impervious area.”
When it rains in the city, some of the water soaks into yards and gardens. But much of it drains away from impervious surfaces – paved streets and parking lots, driveways and sidewalks, roofs of houses and commercial buildings – and enters storm sewers and runs off into streams, rivers and lakes, untreated for any contaminants such as oil, herbicides and chemical fertilizers.
The goals of a stormwater/ drainage program, Shanks related, are to reduce flooding, protect lives and property, control erosion, maintain infrastructure, and preserve water quality.
The City of Lawton charges its utility customers $1.25 per month for stormwater management and $2.30 per month for drainage maintenance. Although those two fees are projected to generate almost $1.99 million in the current Fiscal Year 2025, the two departments were on track to record a combined revenue shortfall of nearly $891,000, Shanks said.
However, that deficit has been eliminated, Public Works Director Michael Watrous told Southwest Ledger last Friday, primarily because, “We didn’t have to hire as many seasonal workers this year and we’re extending the service life of our equipment.”
The stormwater management and the drainage maintenance departments are entirely self-supported from the fees, Watrous said; they receive no money from the city’s General Fund.
Freese & Nichols recommended the City of Lawton “plan for stormwater and drainage revenues to finance all direct operating costs and administrative costs” for those two departments, “including major capital projects.”
Shanks pointed to a study performed by F&N which identified 20 drainage and bridge projects throughout Lawton that would cost more than $193 million to alleviate. A handful of projects on Numu Creek accounted for more than half of that amount: $105.8 million. Although the creek channel is concrete-lined, it may not be wide and/or deep enough to handle the runoff that flows into it, Watrous indicated.
F&N compared monthly residential stormwater utility fees among seven towns: Midwest City, $2.42; Stillwater, $2.46; Edmond, $3; Lawton, $3.55; Enid, $5.55; Broken Arrow, $10.22; and Tulsa, $12.22. Norman’s stormwater management program is partially funded through a public safety sales tax and the city’s general fund.
Research performed by F&N calculated that the average house in Lawton has 3,200 square feet of impervious area (the roof, patio, sidewalk and driveway).
F&N used that square footage to come up with a suggested, combined drainage maintenance and stormwater management fee of $5.25 per “ERU” [equivalent residential unit]. An ERU would be priced at $1.70 more than the two combined current fees of $3.55/month.
Thus, a typical residential customer would be billed monthly for one ERU; a typical small commercial building with 28,213 square feet of impervious area would be billed monthly for nine ERUs; and a typical large commercial building with 178,508 square feet of impervious area would be billed each month for 56 ERUs.
Commercial and industrial buildings would be charged more because they contribute “significantly more runoff” from storms than do houses, Shanks explained.
Councilman Bob Weger wondered “how we’d factor a rainy season versus a dry period?” Protracted droughts are not uncommon in southwest Oklahoma. For instance, Waurika Lake, one of Lawton’s three sources of drinking water, fell dangerously low in 2011-13 during an extended drought.
Watrous said Lawton has 10,913 acres classified as being located in a special flood zone; Norman, 22,195 acres; Moore, 1,113 acres; Midwest City, 1,699 acres; Edmond, 7,590 acres; and Broken Arrow, 2,877 acres.
“We’re not very far along” on upgrading the city’s drainage system, Watrous said. I Avenue, for example, is “notorious for flooding.”
“Our situation with runoff is really, really bad,” said Councilman George Gill.
A storm Saturday that dumped several inches of rain on Lawton – causing significant flooding extending from south Lawton to Apache – punctuated Gill’s observation.
Besides numerous instances of property damage and the loss of some animals southwest of town, a motorist drowned when he drove into floodwaters at Second Street and F Avenue south of Central Plaza. A sump pump at that location was overwhelmed by the heavy rainfall, Public Utilities Director Rusty Whisenhunt said. Lawton police reported that although motorists were cautioned to avoid traveling through that site, a pickup driver ignored the warning and plowed into the water at a high rate of speed. First responders were unable to rescue the driver in time.
Permanent pumps at the site flooded and were removed and sent to a repair shop “to be rebuilt,” which could take several weeks, Whisenhunt said Monday. The station is checked daily, and work on the sump pumps has been performed “in the past few weeks,” he said.
Meanwhile, two temporary pumps have been set up and are pumping, and a third, standby pump is “available if necessary,” Whisenhunt said.
Because the forecast calls for more rain, hardened barricades have been placed “to prevent access until the storms pass,” Whisenhunt said.
The Fee Committee voted unanimously to recommend the City Council merge the stormwater management and the drainage maintenance departments and fees.
“Without the merger of these fees, drainage maintenance will need to further cut their budget in FY2025-26 by approximately $300,000, reducing the level of services provided to the citizens, such as drainage canal vegetation management, mosquito fogging, and drainage structure maintenance,” Watrous said.
However, the committee voted to postpone further consideration of the ERU proposal until 90 days after the proposed merger. “I’m not keen on raising water rates,” Gill said.
City Hall apparently has more time than that to evaluate the plan. “Without a fee increase, by 2029 we’ll have to cut services,” Watrous told the Fee Committee.
Meanwhile, Garver Engineering is performing a stormwater master plan for Lawton. “That study should be done sometime this summer,” Watrous said.