10 year storm
25 year storm
100 year storm
What do those terms mean?
Following the big storm of 2006 city staff went into spasms over the opportunity to use the storm as an excuse to create a municipal drainage utility. Or, in other words, another taxing entity. Homeowners with “typical” (according to the utility) homes now pay about $3.00 a month into this utility.
Double tax
Storm water issues used to be paid out of the city general fund. Creating the utility not only generated another source of revenue for the city, but it gave our city staff the opportunity to move millions of dollars worth of city functions and expenses over to the utility. Did our tax rates go down? No.
This statement in the El Paso Times tells us a lot about how effective our efforts have been: “… the stormwater system in Central El Paso can maintain a 10-year storm now that the Gateway Pond, located at Gateway West and Luna Street, is complete. The Gateway Pond was filled to the top Wednesday and needed El Paso Water crews to pump water out of it.”
Let’s see, we had a storm in 2006 then we built a pond to help us withstand a 10-year storm. In 2013 we had to pump water out of it to avoid flooding.
I suspect that we will hear that the utility needs more money, after all you can’t control nature.
Be comforted by this statement on the utility’s web site: “We expect the greatest portion of the capital improvements to be completed within three years.” They don’t mention any dates.
This is another example of what happens when you take responsibility away from elected officials and vest it in a special organization. City council can now “look into” the matter instead of bearing responsibility.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
So, El Paso gets just two to five inches of rain after having failed to complete its storm water projects in a timely manner, and now our elected officials want to declare El Paso a “disaster” area to try to get free money from the Federal government. That’s ridiculous. We’re definitely a disaster area, but the real disaster is the incompetence of both city and county elected officials and management. But hey, it’s all good. We’re getting a new ballpark.
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