What This Is, and What This Is Not

What Stormwater Service Includes

Stormwater service is work the City already performs to manage rainfall and runoff across Newport. The cost is currently embedded in the sewer rate. The rate study moves that cost to a dedicated fee billed based on impervious area. The work itself is the same:

This work is not optional. It is performed today, it has a real annual cost, and that cost is currently recovered through the sewer rate. The rate study makes the cost visible on the bill and assigns it based on the actual driver, which is impervious area.

What This Supports in Newport

The rate study and the stormwater fee support specific, visible outcomes that residents and businesses experience every day:

• Cleaner streets and catch basins. Routine cleaning so that storm drains work when it rains.
• Reduced roadway flooding. Maintenance and capacity upgrades on drainage segments that flood during heavy rain.
• Drainage response during storms. Crews available to clear blockages and respond to neighborhood drainage complaints year round.
• Water quality protection. Reducing pollutants that reach Newport Harbor, Easton Bay, and Narragansett Bay.
• Regulatory compliance. Meeting the City’s obligations under the federal Clean Water Act and the Rhode Island MS4 permit, which are not optional.
• Long term infrastructure replacement. Funding the replacement of drainage components that are at or past the end of their service life.
• More transparent utility billing. A bill that shows what you pay for stormwater service separately from what you pay for sewer service.

These outcomes are the reason the fee exists. The structure of the fee determines who pays what share, but the work itself is what the money funds.

Explore the Rate Study

Why a Rate Study, Why Now

Three operational realities have changed since Newport’s current wastewater rate was set, and together they make the existing rate structure unsustainable:

• Regulatory obligations have grown. The City operates under a Rhode Island MS4 permit issued by RIDEM under federal Clean Water Act authority, and under a long-standing federal Consent Decree addressing combined sewer overflow control. Both require ongoing operational and capital investment that the current rate structure does not transparently fund.
• The system is aging. Components of the storm drain system date to the 1870s. Catch basins, drainage pipes, and outfalls require condition assessment, repair, and replacement at a pace the embedded cost approach was never designed to support. Deferred maintenance does not reduce cost. It compounds it.
• Cost drivers are now measurable. Flow monitoring, improved system controls, and better asset and parcel data make it possible to identify what actually drives cost. The current rate distributes stormwater cost based on water use because that was the only practical measure available when the rate was set. Better data is now available.

The current structure has two specific weaknesses that follow from these changes:

• Stormwater cost is not driven by water use. It is driven by the hard surfaces on a property that generate runoff, such as roofs, driveways, and parking lots. Billing stormwater service by water use distributes the cost unevenly across customers whose water use and impervious area do not match.
• Revenue from a primarily volumetric sewer rate is unstable. Wet weather, conservation, and seasonal occupancy shift revenue year to year, while the cost of operating and maintaining the system is largely fixed. A revenue structure that does not match the cost structure creates planning and rate stability problems over time.

The rate study responds to both findings. It is also the mechanism for delivering fairer billing for residents, businesses, and institutions that have historically subsidized, or been subsidized by, other customers under the existing structure. Total cost recovery is preserved dollar for dollar at adoption; what changes is how the cost is divided across properties.

Rate Study Status: Final vs Pending

This table shows the current status of each element of the active rate study. It is published so customers, Council members, and members of the public can see at a glance what is settled, what is moving toward adoption, and what is being actively refined. The status of each element is updated as the study progresses and Council direction is received.

For information on the rate adoption process, public participation opportunities, and customer rights, see How Rates Are Adopted.

What This Means for a Typical Household

Bill impacts vary by property. The example below shows how the bill changes for a representative single family household with a 5/8 inch meter, 3,000 gallons of monthly water use, and one ERU of impervious area. Customers with different water use or impervious area will see different results. Some properties will see decreases, some will see increases, and the size of the change depends on the relationship between a property’s water use and its impervious area. A parcel level lookup tool is in development and will allow customers to estimate the change for their own property when it is published.

Three changes appear on the bill at once: the CSO fixed charge is retired and replaced with a sewer base charge tied to meter size, a stormwater fee appears as a separate line based on impervious area, and the volumetric sewer rate decreases because stormwater cost is no longer embedded in it. Total cost recovery for the system is preserved. For this specific representative household, the combined bill decreases by $8.07. The change for any specific customer depends on their meter size, water use, and impervious area.

Bill impacts vary by property. The direction and size of the change depend on each property’s specific combination of water use and impervious area. Properties with higher water use relative to impervious area generally see decreases. Properties with substantial impervious area relative to water use generally see increases. See the Stormwater Fee page for additional impact examples and the Wastewater Rate Restructuring page for the full rate table. A parcel level lookup tool is in development and will allow customers to estimate the change for their own property when it is published.

What Is Under Review, and What Is Not Changing

Guiding Principles

Every design choice in the rate study is tested against these principles. Where a tradeoff exists, for example between a simpler bill and a more precisely fair fee, the Department and the City Council weigh it openly rather than defaulting to a single answer.

Timeline

How to Participate

• Attend a public workshop. Check the Public Workshops page for upcoming dates, locations, and registration.
• Submit a comment. Email ratestudy@NewportRI.gov or call 401-845-5600.
• Take the survey. Share your priorities through the community survey (link posted during active survey windows).
• Subscribe to updates. Request email notifications when meeting materials, reports, or hearing notices are posted.

Document Library

All published rate study documents are listed below. Each document is dated. When a document is revised, the prior version is retained so the record stays complete.