During their annual meeting at Sanitation District No. 1 (SD1), the judges/executive of Boone, Campbell and Kenton Counties voted on Tuesday to approve SD1’s fiscal year 2025 budget, which includes a third reduction of the region’s stormwater management fee in four years and a freeze on SD1’s sewer connection fee to assist with the region’s income-aligned housing priorities.
All stormwater customers will see a 5 percent reduction in the stormwater management fee. Monthly stormwater bills will drop from $4.31 to $4.10 per equivalent residential unit (ERU), while quarterly nonresidential bills will drop from $12.93 to $12.30 per ERU.
“SD1 continues to balance environmental leadership with fiscal responsibility,” said SD1 Executive Director Adam Chaney. “Our stormwater management program addresses critical stormwater infrastructure needs across our region to combat flooding and erosion and improve water quality. At the same time, we continue to enhance efficiencies and improve technologies that enable us to provide these services while reducing our stormwater fee again this year.”
When combined with a 10-percent reduction in 2021 and a 5-percent reduction in 2023, SD1 has reduced its stormwater fee by 18.7 percent over the last four years.
SD1 also announced that as part of a regionwide effort to address a shortage of income-aligned housing, it will freeze its capacity connection fees – the one-time charge paid when new construction is connected to the public system.
“We know that having an ample supply of income-aligned housing is fundamental for Northern Kentucky to meet our basic economic needs and enable regional growth,” said Brent Cooper, president and CEO of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. “Leaders across Northern Kentucky must find unique solutions to housing availability and increasing development costs to ensure that we are meeting the needs of all our residents, or we will lose talent to other metropolitan regions and hold back the next generation of young leaders. We applaud SD1 for finding ways to help tackle this issue.”
Brian Miller, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Northern Kentucky, also applauded the decision.
“SD1’s decision to freeze connection fees plays a crucial role in supporting income-aligned housing and benefiting the community at large,” Miller said. “By reducing the upfront costs of new developments, this move makes it more feasible to build housing, ensuring that residents of all income levels can access safe and adequate housing. This not only helps address housing shortages but also fosters economic diversity and stability within the community. While there will be more needed in the future to help income-aligned housing work for Northern Kentucky and a myriad of solutions necessary, this is a good step in the right direction.”
SD1 will continue with its sanitary sewer base rate structure, which was created five years ago to align sanitary sewer rates with the cost of providing service while also addressing the impacts of declining water consumption on the utility’s operating budget. SD1 charges a base rate for the first 2 hundred cubic feet (HCF) of wastewater treated and a variable rate for each additional HCF. As the base rate increases, the variable rate decreases. This means that again this year, some customers will see their sanitary sewer bill go up while others will see their bill go down.
The base rate will increase from $30 to $34 per month in fiscal year 2025, and the variable rate will decrease from $4.18 per HCF to $3.63 per HCF. The environmental surcharge, which helps fund SD1’s Clean H2O40 sewer overflow mitigation program, will remain $8 per month.
These rate adjustments, which will take effect on July 1, are anticipated to result in a five percent revenue increase needed to fund the obligations of SD1’s long-term capital program.
Sanitation District No. 1