In an effort to battle climate change, the city on Monday inched closer toward making parking lot owners pay for helping manage stormwater runoff, which could potentially reduce the financial burden on other businesses and industries. The city’s budget committee recommended that Toronto Water look at whether the fees industrial and commercial customers pay for water use should be separated from the costs associated with stormwater management. Currently the cost of managing stormwater runoff is borne by businesses and industries through city water use fees — the more water they use, the higher the bill — but that doesn’t always accurately reflect how much stormwater runoff is created by the businesses. As a result, there is no incentive for the parking lots to improve the problem of stormwater runoff. Marshall said the current system is unfair because some major producers of stormwater runoff pay nothing at all.

Source: thestar November 25, 2019 21:56 UTC