How Are You Liking Those Lubbock Stormwater Fees Now?

It was another perilous day on the way to work today.

The Lubbock Plan

The Lubbock plan for stormwater is for it to wash down the streets and into those little roadside reservoirs known as playa lakes. This means everything from the roads, all the trash, gunk and who knows what collects in these lakes. It seem kind of weird to be charged for, um, gravity? I guess at one time there was some engineering to make the water drain a particular way, but it rarely works.

It's Dangerous

It's true that it does not rain enough in Lubbock to warrant a giant overhaul in the way we do things, but this morning for instance, we had what was described by the National Weather Service as "light rain" and since it stuck around for a hot minute, the roads were dangerous and water was completely covering many lanes adjacent to curbs. Again, if this was flooding rains over several days, I'd understand, but light rain for a few hours shouldn't gather as badly as it does.

What Needs To Be Done

You aren't going to find any solutions here and it wouldn't matter if you did. Lubbock has a huge problem of "kicking the can down the road" and not investing in infrastructure. I'm sure we will have the flooding of homes and businesses as we had before, but we have a serious problem of "can't fix the roof when it's raining and if it's not raining, why fix the roof".  None of this would be a problem if it were not for the tax charged as "stormwater utility fees" that are like squeezing lemon juice into a wound.