Search Results (8)

Urban stormwater management presents significant challenges for municipalities seeking to balance environmental resilience with financial considerations and social equity. This study investigates the factors shaping residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a proposed stormwater management fee in Norwalk, Connecticut, within the context of local sustainability plans. A survey of 457 residents assessed demographics, personal beliefs, perceptions of benefits, risks, and WTP. Since participation was voluntary and open, an exact response rate could not be calculated, and the resulting respondent profile differed from city benchmarks. The results were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics alongside a Random Forest machine learning model assessing two payment scenarios, achieving classification accuracies above the majority-class baseline (approximately 60–68%). Across both scenarios, expectations of tangible and locally visible outcomes, including infrastructure upgrades and climate resilience improvements, were the strongest determinants of WTP. When respondents evaluated a specific fee amount rather than a general modest fee, concerns about affordability and program effectiveness became more influential and revealed the conditional nature of financial support. The findings illustrate the value of machine learning for analyzing public attitudes toward environmental finance and highlight how policy framing, transparency, and communication shape acceptance of sustainability measures. These insights provide a data-driven foundation for future research on public engagement and equity in local environmental policy and stormwater plan development. Full article

This paper examines the tensions between existing infrastructure and the need for transitional change in Dutch municipal wastewater collection and treatment. In the Netherlands, sanitation is primarily managed by public actors, with local government playing a major role. The paper demonstrates how local governments navigate these tensions and are both restricted and enabled by the current infrastructure and governance arrangements. Based on interviews, literature reviews, and analyses of statistical trends, it describes five attempts at reform in Dutch sanitation from 1980 to 2020: phosphorus removal; separating stormwater from combined sewers; water cycle companies; energy factories; and decentralized sanitation. The multi-level governance system, with decentralized infrastructure and financing, allows local governments to experiment with alternative practices, develop knowledge, and employ various interactions to mainstream innovations. However, the division of tasks in Dutch sanitation governance tends to optimize sub-systems rather than the entire system. For nationwide implementation, legislation and strong central coordination are essential. Additionally, New Public Management reinforces existing infrastructure lock-in. The paper enhances our understanding of the local government’s role in transitional change and offers insights into how the challenges of existing infrastructure can be mitigated in pursuit of sustainable wastewater solutions. Full article

Policies, Institutions and Regulation (PIR) aspects matter for different sectors’ growth and inclusive sustainable development, but there is little information in the literature on how to evaluate the effects of PIR on management options and outcomes or, on how positive results PIR changes can bring. In terms of stormwater management systems, or urban drainage, PIR is also a controversial and absent matter. Multidisciplinarity, several actors, countless formal and informal rules, and strong contextual path dependence make the subject complex and intricate. Considering the enabling environment, an alignment between policies, institutions and regulations is required to achieve good results and provide sustainable services. This study conducted a hybrid literature review of peer-reviewed papers in this field to provide an overview of how researchers have been studying PIR relations. The gaps show that the understanding of the PIR is fragile, as an important element for analyzing of results to be achieved, including SDG6, the financing and obtaining funds, guarantees and grants for the execution, delivery, operation and maintenance urban stormwater services and infrastructure. The contribution of this review is not only about what exists, but also mainly about what does not exist, since the void keeps waiting to be filled. Full article

The research process of developing recommendations for rural communities directly adjacent to metropolitan cities in the field of local flooding protection, especially retention fee was preceded by: analysis of secondary data in 100 communities in three Functional Urban Areas (Metropolitan Areas, MA) in Poland: Poznań MA, Wrocław MA and Łódź MA (assessment of flooding and urbanization), analysis of primary data in 18 rural communities immediately adjacent to the metropolitan centers: semi-structured telephone interviews (stormwater fee from the stakeholder perspective) and survey research (local floodings from the citizen perspectives). To illustrate the scale of the flooding problem in MAs, flood risk maps were used along with data from the State Fire Service on local threats, and for assessing the scale of suburbanization data obtained from Statistics Poland. Although residents confirmed their readiness to co-finance the activities supporting the development of water retention, local authorities were hesitant to introduce additional charges for the residents. Therefore, a better solution would be to set the fees already at the national level. However, communities should be given more power with regards to the distribution of collected funds which, in turn, should be allocated directly to the local programs for the enhancement of retention capacity in the local catchments. Full article

One of the most complex and difficult questions to answer concerns how to organize and economically support public services of all kinds. In terms of services that involve a multiplicity of actors and objectives, as is the case with urban stormwater management, the difficulty is magnified and resources never seem to be sufficient. This paper reviews the successful approaches to stormwater management in a number of countries and concludes that it is both feasible and possible to successfully structure stormwater management in cities using a variety of models and incentives. With examples from cases practiced in the USA and Canada, based theoretically on the user-pays principle and on the fair distribution of impacts, the text innovates showing not only a technically and legally viable option, but an opportunity for users to become aware of the importance of reducing environmental impacts. By raising the possibility of delivering services out of the general public budget, reducing the taxation of all in exchange for charging only users and improving the performance, the discussion is directed, in an innovative way, to a very rarely questioned aspect and links the change in mentality from and economic way of thinking towards the new stormwater paradigm shift and SDGs. Full article

Urban stormwater infrastructure is at an increased risk of being overwhelmed by pluvial flood events due to climate change. Currently, there are no global standards or frameworks for approaching urban rainfall adaptation policy. Such standards or frameworks would allow cities that have limited time, finances or research capacities to make more confident adaptation policy decisions based on a globally agreed theoretical basis. Additionally, while adaptation via blue-green infrastructure is often weighed against traditional grey infrastructure approaches, its choice must be considered within the context of additional policy alternatives involved in stormwater management. Using six global and developed cities, we explore to what extent a standardized hierarchy of urban rainfall adaptation techniques can be established through a combined Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. While regional and stakeholder differences emerge, our study demonstrates that green infrastructure undertaken by public bodies are the top policy alternative across the cities and stakeholder groups, and that there exists some consensus on best management practice techniques for urban stormwater adaptation. Full article

Lack of stable and dedicated funding has been a primary challenge for municipalities in the United States to implement effective stormwater management programs. Stormwater utility fees (SUFs), as user fees, are an alternative dedicated revenue source to fund stormwater management. When complemented with stormwater utility credits or discounts, SUFs provide greater flexibility to adopting best management practices and reducing stormwater runoff at a lower overall cost to the community. While SUFs have been increasingly used, there is little systematic research on this topic. This paper reviews literature on how SUFs work, discusses the mechanisms for setting the fees, and provides examples of different rate structures from across the U.S. Then, we use the findings of the literature to evaluate SUFs as a funding strategy for stormwater management based on four revenue evaluation criteria of efficiency, equity, revenue adequacy, and feasibility. Overall, the literature indicates that stormwater utility fees are a more efficient and environmentally sustainable source of revenue that allows for long-range planning of capital improvements and operations, but their high political visibility and legal obstacles can affect their effective implementation. However, more empirical research is needed to assess these propositions. There is a lack of literature on effective SUF designs, equitable fee types, the extent to which SUFs lead to change in public behavior and their impact on business and stormwater management investments in a municipality. Full article

Green infrastructure (GI) has increasingly gained popularity for achieving adaptation and mitigation goals associated with climate change and extreme weather events. To continue implementing GI, financial tools are needed for upfront project capital or development costs and later for maintenance. This study’s purpose is to evaluate financing tools used in a selected GI dataset and to assess how those tools are linked to various GI technologies and other GI project characteristics like cost and size. The dataset includes over 400 GI U.S. projects, comprising a convenience sample, from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). GI project characteristics were organized to answer a number of research questions using descriptive statistics. Results indicated that the number of projects and overall cost shares were mostly located in a few states. Grants were the most common financial tool with about two-thirds of the projects reporting information on financial tools receiving grant funding. Most projects reported financing from only one tool with a maximum of three tools. Projects primarily included multiple GI technologies averaging three and a maximum of nine. The most common GI technologies were bioswales, retention, rain gardens, and porous pavements. These findings are useful for decision-makers evaluating funding support for GI. Full article