When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for pollutants entering the Chesapeake Bay in 2010, few expected it would lead directly to higher taxes for Maryland households. Marylanders have long grown accustomed to all manner of tax, toll, and fee hikes over the past few years—70 of them since 2007, according to House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga[1]—but a tax on rain is new even here.

People are, not surprisingly, outraged at the new tax and its questionable implementation.[2] Carroll County has outright refused to enact a tax on stormwater runoff[3] and Del. Patrick McDonough of Baltimore County has begun a campaign against it as well.[4] Nevertheless, 10 counties in Maryland are required by state law to start raising money to combat stormwater runoff, and most have already begun to do so.

While it appears that Maryland is leading the charge in such novel legislation, states and counties all over the nation are being asked to craft bills similar to 2012 Maryland House Bill 987 in response to the EPA mandates for improved water quality. And everyone seems to have a different idea about the best way to tax the rain.