We were having a discussion yesterday with Margherita Pryor of our regional EPA office and she brought up this presentation on creating a stormwater utility. It was interesting for several reasons….gives a reasonable method to ‘slice’ the problem of urban stormwater management using impervious surface areas, shows an adequate willingness to pay in several hundred communities, creates an approach to determining feasibility.
Margherita also drew a parallel to our bobolink project – where we’re developing a community market for wildlife habitat preservation. She referred to it as a ‘bobolink utility’. The definition of a utility is ‘a company providing something useful to the public’. Traditionally, we’ve used that structure for electric power, gas, water, telephone. Interestingly, the ‘useful to the public’ implies a social responsibility that separates the service from other commercial services. Obviously, new ecological and environmental knowledge (and a number of environmental problems) is quickly making us realize that the ethical implications are there in all goods and services.
(Note: The file takes a minute to download.)
Richard Pace 