LEWISTON – The latest draft of a storm-water fee would give property owners a break for keeping runoff away from the city system or exceeding state storm water standards.

Councilors continued their review of a plan to collect the fees to pay for and maintain Lewiston’s storm-water system. That would include street cleaning, culvert work and ditch maintenance as well as storm-water separation projects.

The project will get a public hearing on Sept. 19, when councilors are scheduled to vote on the fee details.

The city council adopted the plan this spring as part of its budget deliberations, cutting $1.6 million from the spending plan but leaving the details to be determined.

According to the plan, the city would charge a flat fee of $30 for the first 2,900 square feet of water-impervious surfaces. That would include driveways, sidewalks, parking lots and roofs.

The 2,900 square feet would cover most single-family homes. Bigger properties with more flat spaces would pay more, at a rate of 4.4 cents per square foot.

The latest draft would give commercial property owners a break on the fee if they had their own storm-water collection systems in place or had done work that exceeded state storm-water management guidelines.

“The idea all along has been to charge the fee to those that have the greatest impact on the system,” said David Jones, city public services director.

Property owners would get a 50 percent credit if they could prove none of the storm-water run off came into any city road, ditch or storm sewer system. They could get a 30 percent credit if they could prove nothing less than 60 percent of storm water stayed away from city water.

Property owners could get a second credit if they installed a system to handle storm water that surpassed state storm forecasts. They could have 25 percent of their fee credited if they built a system designed to handle a 50-year storm, for example.

The fee would generate an estimated $124,671 in new revenue from tax-exempt organizations. Those property owners don’t pay taxes to the city.

In all, the fee would generate $1.6 million, money to pay for operations, maintenance and debt, replacing the money cut out of the budget. The rest would be used to pay for start-up costs for the utility and to pay for credits for property owners that create water retention or run-off systems.