Yes citizen, you are a polluter!  Just by owning a home or a piece of property where the rain happens to fall says Alison Prost, Maryland Executive Director at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.  Watch this enlightening video from FOX 5 in DC on their Rain Tax.  Let's make sure this doesn't take hold in our City in the Suburbs. 

If you think the Rain Tax is the invention of candidates for Elgin City Council and Elgin OCTAVE, you might want to reconsider.  In Maryland, the General Assembly has passed legislation the Gazatte.net has rightly called, "The 'Rain Tax.'"  "By taxing so-called 'impervious surfaces,' anything that prevents rain water from seeping into the earth (roofs, driveways, patios, sidewalks, etc.) thereby causing stormwater run off. In other words, a rain tax." [Emphasis mine]

News regarding the Maryland tax is beginning to spread with articles from Matthew Boyle at Breitbart.com, Justin Snow of the Maryland Reporter, and Beckett Adams from The Blaze.  The Gazette.net gave a good overview of what happened, "In 2010 the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency ordered Maryland to reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay so that nitrogen levels fall 22 percent and phosphorus falls 15 percent from current amounts. The price tag: $14.8 billion...The EPA ordered Maryland to raise the money (an unfunded mandate), Maryland ordered its 10 largest counties to raise the money (another unfunded mandate) and, now, each of those counties is putting a local rain tax in place by July 1."

The EPA has already lost one court battle in Virginia where they were accused of overstepping their authority.  "U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady in Alexandria ruled late Thursday that the EPA exceeded its authority by attempting to regulate stormwater runoff into a Fairfax County creek as a pollutant.  'Stormwater runoff is not a pollutant, so EPA is not authorized to regulate it,' O'Grady said."

While the final outcome is far from over, it is clear that the Rain Tax isn't a figment of the imagination, but I doubt that will satisfy the critics. 

"The five newly elected members of the Elgin City Council have different priorities, but all agree that the makeup of the council has taken a turn toward the fiscally conservative."  Read more...