Baby The Rain Must Fall

Wow.....I remember that Glenn Yarborough hit of the 1060's, but I never thought I would be penalized for the rain.




As local and state governments scratch about madly looking for the means to replace and prop up waning tax revenues, just about everything that could possibly be imagined is now coming on the table for taxation.

Not only is Obama backtracking and playing down the fact that he is in fact coming after the middle class with his tax increases to fund health care, but on the local level people are literally being smacked with the double dip by their local officials.

Take for instance this proposal in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles might require rainwater capture

Think it couldn't happen to you? Think again. It already has happened to me. I live in a metropolitan county in Georgia. And this little scam to tax runoff was passed about four years ago by my county. With little notice and less awareness of their intent, the county passed an ordinance that requires that fees be paid annually to offset "their costs" of supposedly managing rain water runoff.

Or in other words, I now pay $50 a year in additional taxes because of rainfall. Not that the runoff from my property represents any threat to my neighbors or any additional threat to the community at large. The runoff from my property channels into a creek and from there on into a river. A river that has been at drought level four of the past five years.

My rain water runoff never touches the county water treatment facility and it never has, but for the past four years I have been paying an annual tax because (heaven forbids) it rains on my property!

And that is precisely what is being proposed in Los Angeles and I suspect the same be proposed all across this country, just as soon as these other county and city and state boards learn of the new tax cash cow to be milked for the asking.

Read on as it concerns L.A.

A proposed law would require new homes, larger developments and some redevelopments in Los Angeles to capture and reuse runoff generated in rainstorms.

The ordinance approved in January by the Department of Public Works would require such projects to capture, reuse or infiltrate 100% of runoff generated in a 3/4 -inch rainstorm or to pay a storm water pollution mitigation fee that would help fund off-site, low-impact public developments.

The fairly new approach to managing storm water and urban runoff is designed to mitigate the negative effects of urbanization by controlling runoff at its source with small, cost-effective natural systems instead of treatment facilities. Reducing runoff improves water quality and recharges groundwater.

Board of Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels, who drafted the ordinance last July, said the new requirements would prevent 104 million gallons of polluted urban runoff from ending up in the ocean.

And this is my favorite part. Pay close attention to the fee that they are proposing.

Under the ordinance, builders would be required to use rainwater storage tanks, permeable pavement, infiltration swales or curb bump-outs to manage the water where it falls. Builders unable to manage 100% of a project's runoff on site would be required to pay a penalty of $13 a gallon of runoff not handled there -- a requirement the Building Industry Assn. has been fighting.

That's right $13 a gallon! Holy Mackerel! How many thousands of gallons could escape an average sized property over the course of one storm. And how would they determine what you owed or that you were in violation.

Simple, they would simple create a calculation based upon square footage of your property and then simply send you a bill. Yes friends and neighbors, they are about to tax you for the rain that falls.

And here you were thinking that with cap and trade and the Copenhagen accords and CO2 being criminalized as a pollutant, that they only wanted to tax your breathing.