A stormwater utility is a mechanism to raise sufficient funds for stormwater management, allocate its costs more fairly, and help ensure that less polluted runoff reaches our streams and rivers. Without a stormwater utility, the costs of managing flooding and runoff are included in other local government costs — typically either property taxes or water or sewer fees. This often leads to under-investment in managing stormwater, and can create inequities in who pays, since some property owners don’t pay property taxes, and some properties, while generating runoff, don’t pay a water or sewer bill.