The Chattanooga City Council voted 9-0 Tuesday night to pursue aggressively collecting outstanding stormwater fees.
“It’s going to be like pulling teeth,” Mayor Ron Littlefield said Tuesday. “The big ones, of course, are the state and federal government.”
More than $22 million in water quality fees, often called stormwater fees, are owed to the city since 1993, records show. City officials said Tuesday they have found that about $5 million is owed between the years 2005 and 2008.
A statute of limitations allows the city to go after only those outstanding fees from the last six years, officials said.
Some discussion in the council’s agenda session centered on why some institutions owe so much. Councilwoman Sally Robinson asked why the National Park Service owes hundreds of thousands of dollars when it also owns mostly natural resources and preserves.