2019.01.23 CC Packet - Goal Setting Session

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Metropolitan Agencies The Metropolitan Council establishes a surcharge on cities determined to be contributing unacceptable amounts of I/I into the wastewater system. The charge is waived when cities meet certain parameters through local mitigation efforts. Metro Cities recognizes the importance of controlling I/I because of its potential environmental and public health impacts, because it affects the size, and therefore the cost, of wastewater treatment systems and because excessive I/I in one city can affect development capacity of another. However, there is the potential for cities to incur increasingly exorbitant costs in their ongoing efforts to mitigate excessive VI. Metro Cities continues to monitor the surcharge program and supports continued reviews of the methodology used to measure excess I/I to ensure that the methodology appropriately normalizes for precipitation variability and the Council's work with cities on community specific issues around I/I. Metro Cities supports state financial assistance for Metro Area I/I mitigation through future Clean Water Legacy Act appropriations or similar legislation and encourages the Metropolitan Council to partner in support of such appropriations. Metro Cities also supports resources, including identified best practices, information on model ordinances, public education and outreach, and other tools, to local governments to address inflow/infiltration mitigation for private properties. Metro Cities recognizes the recommendations of a 2016 Inflow/Infiltration Task Force that support considering the use of a portion of the regional wastewater charge for private property inflow/infiltration mitigation. Any proposal to utilize the wastewater fee for this purpose must include the opportunity for local officials to review and comment on specific proposals. Metro Cities supports continued state capital assistance to provide grants to metro area cities for mitigating inflow and infiltration problems into municipal wastewater collection systems. 4-N Sewer Availability Charge (SAC) Metro Cities supports a SAC program that emphasizes equity, transparency, simplification and lower rates. Metro Cities supports principles for SAC that include program transparency and simplicity, equity for all served communities and between current and future users, support for cities' sewer fee capacities, administrative reasonableness, and weighing any program uses for specific goals with the impacts to the program's equity, transparency and simplicity. As such, Metro Cities opposes the use of the SAC mechanism to subsidize and/or incent specific Metropolitan Council goals and objectives. Metro Cities supports modifications to the SAC program recommended by a 2018 SAC Task Force and adopted by the Metropolitan Council to simplify the SAC determination 2019 Legislative Policies 47