Wheeling Public Works Director Calls For Creation of City Stormwater Division

WHEELING -- The city of Wheeling has been working to remove stormwater from its sanitary sewer systems in recent years. The growing list of duties associated specifically to stormwater management is expected to prompt city leaders to explore creating a new division to handle it.

Operation of a new stormwater management division will also have to be funded in one way or another, officials said.

Last week, Wheeling Public Works Director Russell Jebbia and Stormwater Coordinator Joe Smith addressed members of the Public Works Committee of City Council about implementing the proposed downspout daylighting pilot program in certain areas of the city. The program is designed to help property owners remove downspouts from sanitary sewer systems, which causes storm water to overburden the lines during heavy rains.

This results in stormwater and raw sewage backing up into and flooding basements in certain areas of the city.

The basement flooding occurs even in areas where the city has already performed sewer separations -- eliminating combined stormwater and sanitary sewer by installing separate lines. These sewer separations are part of the city's ongoing long-term Water Pollution Control plan to upgrade its aging systems and to satisfy West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection guidelines.

Officials last week said these efforts are just part of an array of needs coming down the pike in terms of stormwater management.

"The DEP and everybody else has been on us because every year, we have to file our stormwater plan -- and in that plan we have all of these ideas of what we need to do," Jebbia said, "because any time there is a rain event and every time there's stormwater that's coming out, we need to go out and be sampling that stormwater and see how clean it is."

Jebbia noted that as Stormwater Coordinator, Smith is one person. However, the extent of responsibilities related to stormwater management is becoming much more detailed to the point that more city staffers will need to focus on it.

"This thing is going to continue to grow," Jebbia said. "We're going to need more people, we're going to need equipment to go out and do this stuff, we have to send these test results in. This is not just something that's very simple to do. Stormwater basically is going to eventually evolve into its own entity -- it's going to be a Stormwater Division of the Public Works Department, similar to what we have with the sanitary sewer line division -- Water Pollution Control. So it's going to be a separate entity on its own, and at some time, it's got to have funding."

Jebbia said that Moundsville, Bethlehem and other area communities -- along with the state of West Virginia -- have a fee structure in place to address these issues.

"They all have a stormwater fee that's included on their water bill, just like our garbage fee and our sewer fee." Jebbia noted. "Most of them on a residential basis are set up as a flat fee, like a residential house -- then when you get into commercial property, it's based on your impervious ground if you have pavement, roof and that type of thing, you're billed accordingly based on an equation."

Jebbia said his department had a proposed formula worked out, but plans to move it were put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have those things set up to begin, but at some time, we need to start going down that road," Jebbia said.

In the meantime, the city is moving forward with its pilot program to remove downspouts and redirect rainwater into the separated storm sewers.

"The stormwater fee is something I've never heard until right now, and I'm apprehensive with going down that path right now," Councilman Jerry Sklavounakis, chairman of the Public Works Committee of Council, said during last week's meeting when the issue of a new Storm Water Division was raised. "I think that's something the city can look at through finances to see if we need to go down that path."