Tallahassee Stormwater Management

The City of Tallahassee manages stormwater as a utility service billed on every city utility statement.

The Tallahassee Stormwater Management page states the mission as helping the community define its priority stormwater objectives, in the context of physical, environmental and socio-economic concerns, and carrying out strategies within the resources the community chooses to allocate.

The water has many places to go. The city's lake monitoring page counts over 50 lakes in the City of Tallahassee and over 200 lakes in Leon County alone, and lake water quality questions go to the Stormwater Department at 850-891-6860. The Tallahassee Surface Water Master Plan (TMaPS) on the same city page is organized into volumes for the Lake Munson, Lake Jackson and Lake Lafayette drainage basins, with Wakulla Springs and Lake Talquin in a separate volume along with project and regulatory recommendations; the plan runs to seven volumes in all. The city's strategic plan dashboard describes the same three regional drainage basins, each with its lake as the primary receiver.

A Tallahassee home pays $11.00 a month for stormwater, according to the City of Tallahassee rate listing checked in October 2026.

Commercial customers pay $11.00 per month per Equivalent Residential Unit, or ERU, which the city defines as 1,990 square feet of impervious area. Roofs, driveways and parking lots shed rain instead of soaking it up, so a shopping center on Apalachee Parkway or Tennessee Street is billed for many ERUs while a house is billed for one.

The fee also pays for programs. The city lists a fertilizer ordinance and application guide, lake monitoring, pool discharge rules, a rainfall dashboard, a stormwater guide and the Think About Personal Pollution (TAPP) campaign, including a TAPP segment on Wakulla Springs. Leon County's assessment FAQ describes its own fee as paying for facility maintenance and operation, engineering, drainage investigations, permit compliance and lake monitoring.

Official pages disagree on the older numbers, and this page states the conflict rather than picking one. The same county FAQ still says the City of Tallahassee levies a $57.00 annual stormwater fee spread over 12 months, far below the $11.00 monthly charge, or $132 a year, on the city's own page. It also says the county fee was established in 1991 at $20 per year with no increases approved since, while the county's stormwater fee page says the fee was updated in 2013 to the $51, $60 and $85 tiers.

The City of Tallahassee has built a string of lake treatment projects since the 1980s, according to its strategic plan dashboard, last updated January 2024.

By the early 1980s treated wastewater was no longer discharged to Lake Munson, and in 1986 the city constructed the first aluminum-sulfate stormwater treatment system in Florida at Lake Ella, the small lake in Midtown beside North Monroe Street.

The dashboard names other recent work along Megginnis Arm, Boone Boulevard and the Lower Central Drainage Ditch. It reports that since the early 1970s the concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus discharged into Lake Munson from Munson Slough have been reduced by 95%, and that in 2023 the city kept monitoring local waters with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and continued to surpass FDEP water quality rules at its points of discharge into Lakes Jackson, Lafayette and Munson. The stated target is to reduce nutrient concentrations reaching those three recreational lakes.

The St. Augustine Branch became flood control through the Capital Cascades projects, which pair stormwater ponds with a downtown park and greenway.

A 2005 Florida Senate funding request submitted January 12, 2005, by the City of Tallahassee sought $3,000,000 in state money toward a $4,000,000 Capital Cascades Greenway/St. Augustine Branch Restoration Project, built in coordination with an urban park and greenway in the downtown area to reduce downstream, south side surface and groundwater pollution and flooding. The request said the project would also protect recharge of the aquifer contributing to the base flow of Wakulla Springs, and that the watershed contributing to Segment 2 was 951 acres.

Cascades Park is the result most residents know. Leon County's 2011 annual report said Blueprint 2000 was designing and constructing four segments of the Cascades Trail, that the 24-acre park was expected to open in late 2012, and that it would provide significant stormwater management facilities to abate flooding problems along the St. Augustine Branch. The same report noted $4.2 million in disaster relief emergency funds for stormwater improvements along Franklin Boulevard. The Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency describes the finished park as a stormwater facility that doubles as an urban park: designed to flood, it offers relief to nearby areas during major storms, and it was paid for with the one-cent local option sales tax.

Outside the city limits, Leon County runs its own stormwater utility, established by the Board of County Commissioners in 1991, according to the county's stormwater fee page.

Costs are allocated by impervious area on developed property in the unincorporated area. A commercial property with 32,730 square feet of building and pavement pays 10 times the $85 assessment, or $850 a year, and owners who maintain their private stormwater facilities and keep the operating permit in good standing get a reduction of 25% to 75% of the annual fee. Residents with the low income senior or disabled veteran exemption from the Leon County Property Appraiser can get a grant that reduces the assessment.

The county fee appears on the annual property tax bill, and the county FAQ says there are no exemptions by owner type: state, county, city and school facilities and churches all pay. It justifies the fee by pointing to drainage along public roads such as Miccosukee Road, which in turn protects water bodies such as Lake Munson. Leon County's floodplain page names Black Creek, Bradford Brook, Gum Creek, Munson Slough, the Ochlockonee River and the St. Marks River as riverine systems in the county. For a household, the practical difference is the bill: a city address pays monthly on the utility statement, while unincorporated property pays once a year with property taxes.

The City of Tallahassee defines a flood as a general or temporary condition where two or more acres of normally dry land, or two or more properties, are inundated by water or mudflow, on its stormwater page.

The Tallahassee page lists hurricanes and storms, storm surge, heavy or prolonged rain, dam failure, above average rainfall and inadequate drainage as causes, and notes that some floods build over days or weeks while flash floods can develop within a few minutes.

The same City of Tallahassee page gives practical steps: in a high flood risk area, elevate the furnace, water heater and electric panel; consider check valves so flood water cannot back up into household drains; move to higher ground if a flash flood is possible; and do not drive into flooded areas, since six inches of moving water can knock a person down and a vehicle can be swept away quickly.

Last verified: October 18, 2026. The city stormwater and lake monitoring pages, the city strategic plan dashboard, both Leon County stormwater pages and its floodplain page, the 2011 Leon County annual report, the Blueprint Cascades Park page and the 2005 Senate request were each re-read for this check.