Lucas County along with many of the cities, villages, and townships that make up Lucas County are under EPA orders as part of the Clean Water Act to keep pollutants out of receiving streams to the maximum extent possible. The implementation of these requirements has put a burden on budgets, causing some communities to form storm water utilities to help fund these unfunded mandates. As of May 10, 2011 Lucas County has formed a Storm Water utility to fund these EPA requirements along with stream improvements which have no dedicated source of funding and are a major source of flooding in our area. This Storm Water Utility is for the EPA Phase II areas only and includes 7 named townships: Jerusalem, Washington, Sylvania, Springfield, Spencer, Monclova and Waterville.

The Storm Water Utility is based on an ERU (Equivalent Residential Unit) of 5,500 sq ft of hard surface (impervious) area and is billed twice a year at $24.36 on your tax duplicate, this works out to $4.06 per month per ERU. Non-Residential parcels with more than 5,500 sq ft of hard surface (impervious) area will be billed as multiple ERUs, rounded to the nearest whole number. 

The county will maintain 4 watershed districts, in which money collected within the district will be distributed proportionally to the money collected in each district as follows:

Lake Erie (Jerusalem Twp)
Ottawa River (Washington Twp)
Ten Mile Creek (Sylvania Twp and Northern 1/3 of Springfield and Spencer Twp)
Swan Creek (Southern 2/3 of Spencer, Springfield, All of Monclova and Waterville Twp)

A credit of up to 50% maximum is available to non-residential parcels that are billed at more than 1 ERU. Actual physical improvements must be done on site to obtain credits and or a continuing public education program in order to qualify for the credit. Partial credit will be awarded on a case by case basis.

No credit is available for residential parcels billed at 1 ERU

Here is the Non-Residential Credit Application 

If you have any questions please see our Frequently Asked Questions

Here is the Storm Water Utility District Brochure that was mailed to you.

The Storm Water Utility is based on the following study that has been presented to the county:

SWAC 1 (Dec 2008)
SWAC 2 (Mar 2009)
SWAC 3 (April 2009)
SWAC 4 (June 2009)
SWAC 5 (June 2010)
SWAC 6 (Feb 2011)