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WL considers stormwater fees

West Lafayette is proposing storm water fees to help pay for future projects.

If approved, residents will pay eight-dollars per 3,200 square feet of impervious surface a month starting next year.

Public Works Director Dave Buck says the funding is vital the city’s future.

"It gives us a mechanism to fix a lot of those fairly simply problems that occur because something just simply fails and we have no dedicated revenue stream to go out and fix a failed pipe underneath the roadway or an inlet that has collapsed.”

But some residents such as Jim Bodemiller say the fee is not right.

“We are already paying for the individual properties and to single out planned developments and private streets to say that this justifies another fee, we think is certainly unfair.”

Bodemiller, who is the President of the Westport Homeown'ers Association, says he supports the fee, but wants it tweaked.

He expects the proposed fee to cost him six-dollars more a month on top of the eight dollars per 32-hundred square feet of impervious surface being proposed for all residents.

Buck says the city will look at Bodenmiller’s concern, but says other cities have implemented the stormwater fee and have not come across these problems.

The city council is scheduled to vote on the fee in February.