What a three-year reprieve gives a board

Budget the rate, not the measurement. That is the practical instruction, and it inverts the way most boards read a pause. A frozen ERU count with a rising rate still produces a rising bill. A board that treats the pause as relief and holds the line item flat will be short.

Use the window to check the count. The reason DC Water paused was concern about bill impacts and the clarity of its communications — which is to say the re-measurement was producing surprises. An association that pulls its current ERU figure now, and compares it against what is actually impervious on the site, is doing the work the Authority deferred, on its own timetable rather than in response to a bill.

Treat impervious surface as a capital variable. The only durable way to reduce this charge is to reduce impervious area — permeable paving on a resurfacing cycle, a green roof at replacement, canopy where hardscape is not needed. Those are decisions taken at capital-project time, and a three-year pause is exactly the horizon over which a reserve plan can be adjusted deliberately rather than reactively.

Three things are moving at once

This is a confusing area right now because three separate developments point in different directions.

The measurement is frozen until at least fiscal year 2029, as above.

The methodology is under judicial criticism. In September 2025 the Court of Appeals held that DC Water had not adequately explained the rational connection between metering and the impervious-area charge, in a challenge brought by a master-metered condominium classified as a multi-family rather than residential customer — covered in our report on that decision.

The enforcement mechanism is being strengthened. District legislation carried on the temporary and emergency track defines athletic courts, swimming pools and private streets as chargeable surface and provides that non-payment produces a lien on the property without further notice — covered in our report on that statute.

An association reading only one of these gets the wrong picture. The charge is not going away, the way it is calculated is contested, and the consequence of not paying it has become harsher.

One disclosure point

The District's revised residential seller disclosure form now asks about stormwater Declarations of Covenants. That is where an association's retention obligations — and any credits it generates — surface at resale. Boards that have entered into retention arrangements should make sure the association can answer the question, because the seller of every unit will eventually be asked it.

What to watch next

October 1, 2026, for the fiscal year 2027 rate, and any signal about whether the re-measurement resumes earlier than announced. Also the remand in the Court of Appeals case, which is the only route by which the classification itself might change.