Price Sewer Fairly: Petition to the Grants Pass City Council

(Petition Statement, Signature Side)

We, the undersigned residents and business owners of Grants Pass, want our sewer service to be priced fairly, as a subscription service, without unit rates.  Debt service would be a separate, fixed fee and end when the debt is paid.  Rates would rise only by actual inflation of the previous year’s expenses from the year before, not the Consumer Price Index.

This is an advisory petition to the Grants Pass City Council, to request that this matter be discussed and acted upon at a City Council Meeting.  It is not a petition for the ballot. 

Signers must be city residents, landlords, or business owners.

(Statement of Points, backside)

Price Sewer Fairly

Council, please eliminate unit charges on our sewer service, raise the rate only by actual expenses of the previous year over the year before, and assign the plant’s debt service to a fixed fee that ends when the debt is paid.

          We are currently charged unit charges for sanitary sewer service, also known as wastewater treatment, based on the average number of units of water per month used the previous winter.  We should be charged only a subscription base rate, without unit charges, and any inflation of the rates should be based on a rise in actual expenses of the plant of the previous year from the year before, not the Consumer Price Index.

Unit charges are unfair to large households, many of whom are poor and must share housing expenses, and/or are young families with children.  People who can afford to live alone or as couples generally do so. 

Charging unit prices only subsidizes the rich and punishes the poor and those with more children for the water we use for household uses.  It is more just and better for the workings and finances of the plant to have the well-off subsidize sewer for poor people and for larger families who raise children who will pay taxes to Social Security and Medicare.

This service benefits all people equally, so households should pay equally, as should businesses and governments, depending on their water service size class.  Cities provide sanitary sewer service and mandate the use thereof within city limits to control the diseases that can result from contact with sewage.  We treat our wastewater to drinking water standards set by the federal government before returning that water to the river for the same reason and to protect the life in our river. 

We cannot control the amount of bodily waste we produce, and there is no reason why we should.  We have some control over the amount of water we use, and that can be a problem for sewage treatment if people are charged high sewage bills for winter water use.  Our waste requires a lot of water to carry it down the pipe to the wastewater treatment plant.  If people are using the toilet several times before they flush it and otherwise being very careful about their water use, the pipes can clog, interrupting service, causing trouble, and creating extra expense.  Having more concentrated waste may also make it harder and cost more to clean it to drinking water level.

Likewise, if people become very careful about their water use because of high water unit charges and wastewater unit charges on top of that, the city will collect less money from unit charges and have to raise the sewer rates on everyone.  Everyone will have to pay more for the same service. 

To start paying for the debt service on the ongoing renovation of our sewage treatment plant, the City raised the rates 7% on both the base rate and unit charges, assigning half of a fixed cost to variable revenue, dependent on winter water use.  It is set to be raised 7% again next year and the year after.  That debt service should be paid with a fixed fee for a very fixed cost, which is not affected by inflation.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040            rycke@gardener.com

Price Water to Sell: Petition to the Grants Pass City Council

(Petition Statement, signature side)

We, the undersigned, want our city water to be priced to sell it, not to ration it, so we can use all that we need for all beneficial uses at a low price that stays low.  We would assign all fixed overhead costs into fixed base rates.  Debt service would be paid by a fixed fee and sunset when the debt is paid.  Only marginal unit costs would be assigned to a single unit rate.  Base and unit rates would rise only by actual inflation of costs of the previous year from the year before, not the Consumer Price Index.

This is an advisory petition to the Grants Pass City Council, to request that this matter be discussed and acted upon at a City Council Meeting.  It is not a petition for the ballot. 

Signers must be city residents, landlords, or business owners.

(Back side statement of points)

We Must Price Water to Sell

Council, please pay our water overhead costs with a fixed base rate and debt service fee, and pay only marginal unit costs, those that vary with the number of units produced, in unit rates.  This would provide the lowest, most stable rates, and allow us to use as much water as we need to maintain our properties and keep us all safe from wildfire.

Water is not precious, it is vital.  Precious things are rare and are considered luxuries.  Water is the most abundant resource on Earth.  It is a basic necessity, the basis of life and source of biological wealth.  With high-priced water, there is less life in our city and we have less wealth.

Cleaned fresh water is vital for public health and safety. We must stop rationing it by price.  Water must be priced for all to be able to use for the benefit of all, at the lowest rates that will pay for providing water to each customer for all good uses, particularly watering.

West of the Rockies, we need to water our cities to keep them and the country around them safe to live in.  We live in natural semi-desert, with a cold ocean that doesn’t readily evaporate.  Semi-desert is far more dangerous than real desert, as it grows more fuel to dry out and burn, creating firestorms.  Green grass doesn’t burn; nor do cities full of it.

Low-priced water made Grants Pass clean, green, and safe from wildfire for decades, by allowing everyone with property to grow food and maintain property for beauty and safety.  Into the ‘80s, water service was cheap and we used it freely, as did most cities around the developed world.

Grants Pass city water kept the surrounding countryside moister and safer in summer as well, as the whole city pumped millions of gallons out of our river, into the air and all over plants and the ground, with sprinklers.  Much of it evaporated, to spread outward through the countryside, blowing uphill and upstream with our prevailing west wind, sharing it with other places downwind, making rain to fill our creeks, rivers, and aquifers, making the whole area green and safe from wildfire. 

In the ‘80s, we started being told that fresh water is a scarce, precious resource which we must save--by all means, in all places.  We bought it at the time, never thinking about fire.  Activists talked to city councils, and cities started rationing water by price, lowering base rates, hiking unit prices and even creating tiered rates, higher unit prices for higher use, the opposite of normal unit pricing.

This system is designed to save water, not to sell it.  It doesn’t pay the whole overhead, the fixed costs of owning and running the plant, with a fixed base rate. It pays much of the overhead with high unit rates.  The easiest use to cut is watering.  Less watering doesn’t pay the overhead, so the city raises base and unit rates, further suppressing use, and raises both prices again, in a continual upward-ratcheting spiral of every household paying more to use less water. 

California cities led the way in price rationing, going brown first, sowing drought and reaping wildfire in the last decade, as dry forests, scrub and grassland burn right through dry cities.  We are only 10 years behind them in ratcheting our water prices ever upward, following them into the inferno.

We must stop this upward spiral of water rates and dangerous dry ugliness, and reform our water rate system closer to how we paid in the 1980s.  

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040            rycke@gardener.com

Water stops fires, tames climate

             Humans change climate.  We have changed our climate twice over the last 70 years.  First, we made the climate wetter, cooler, and safer with sprinkler irrigation.  It became noticeable in the ‘70s and ’80, but we didn’t notice; we thought it was natural.  Since the ‘80s, we have been returning California, Southern Oregon, and other Mediterranean climates to dangerous semi-desert conditions by trying to save water everywhere, without good reason.  This summer, parts of California and Oregon were burning, as has happened for the last 10 years, and in many parts of California last winter.  Choking on smoke is the new summer normal in Southern Oregon, but it doesn’t have to be.

            The ‘80s was the decade when water alarmists started telling us that we have to save fresh water, no matter the local conditions, because only 2% of the water on Earth is fresh.  They say that evaporation from sprinklers is waste.  Activists talk to city councils; cities follow each other, and states follow their cities. California cities led the way in rationing by price with low base rates and high unit prices and even tiered rates, oppressing the poor and middle class, most of whom stopped watering their yards, the intended effect.  We and many other cities around the world have followed them, drying out their cities and the countryside around them, making them drier, hotter, colder, stormier and fire-prone.  These are symptoms of drying, not greenhouse warming--desert conditions.

Evaporation is not waste; it is part of the water cycle.  We who live west of the Rockies are blessed with rivers that run into the prevailing wind and blow our water vapor uphill and upstream to make rain, filling our creeks and rivers and sending moisture over the mountains, when we make enough of it by watering our cities fully.

Water tames climate.  At 1%-4% of the atmosphere, water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, holding heat by its sheer thermal mass and the blanketing effect of clouds. Yet it also cools the air during the day, by cloud shading; rain; transpiration; and evaporation, which can bring wet objects down to 40 degrees F, the temperature at which it starts evaporating.

Water stops fires.  Summer thunderstorms made rain, not dry lightning, when given moisture from sprinklers on nearly all the properties in cities and suburbs.  It is harder for fires to start and burn when the air is moister, and they are easier to put out.  This is what happened in the ‘80s, a wet decade we are told, when practically everybody in cities watered because clean water was cheap. 

I did a small study of summer rainfall in the 97526 zip code, covering 1983 to 2012.  In the ‘80s, we had bigger rain events in Grants Pass in July and August than in June and September.  In the ‘90s, that reversed and reversed further in the 2000s.  Our midsummer rainfall has dropped 0.9 inches per decade, as our water bills have climbed, along with our monthly high temperatures.

Thousands of single-family homes in a single subdivision in Santa Rosa, California burned in Santa Anna winds last winter, while thin strips of green grass and trees out front of those homes did not. Their top water rate is $6.50 per 1000 gallons.  600 homes burned in Redding this summer, while everyone paid $1.425 for every 750 gallons.  Our top rate is $1.40.

We need to stop following other cities to perdition and return to water that is cheap to use after paying a base that fully covers the overhead, and make our city clean, green, and safe again!

Email the Grants Pass City Council and Mayor: mayorcouncil@grantspassoregon.gov

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener               541-955-9040                 rycke@gardener.com

Ask the Council to Wait

          The City of Grants Pass is planning to build a new, $80 million water treatment plant, to replace our 80-year old plant.  One part of it, the clear well, is falling apart and cannot be fixed in the time it would take us to use all the water in our storage tanks.

            Wednesday, November 7^th, at 6:00 PM, the City Council plans to vote on new water rates to start paying for the plant as we build it.  Please come to the meeting and ask the Council to hold off on setting the rates until they look at the numbers for both proposed rate systems.

           We all have the same right to water, as we all own it.  Our present rates oppress the poor and middle class by giving us cheap access to water with a low base rate but rationing our use by high unit prices.  The City’s highly-paid consultants would double down on the high and tiered unit rates and low base rates that were instituted in 2006 to save water.

            We should pay overhead, fixed prices, in the base rate, and pay unit costs, those that vary with the units produced, electricity for pumping and chemicals for cleaning, in one unit price.  This is the normal way that industry sets prices for a service and allows households to pay less per unit the more we buy, the normal way things are priced.  We have long had this alternative rate proposal on the table.  But city staff needs direction from Council to figure out the rates that would result.  Ask the Council to demand these numbers and to wait on setting rates until they have them.

• ·        Watering property is a basic right and duty of property owners and renters, rich and poor alike.  Low unit price promotes equal maintenance that makes the city clean, green, and safe. 
• ·        We have plenty of water in our river, and a dam to hold it for irrigation.  When the Lost Creek reservoir is low in May due to low snowpack, we can save water equally, by not watering lawns.
• ·         It is hard to waste water in a country with modern wastewater treatment.  Sewage is treated to drinking water standards and put back in the river.  Water that sinks below roots recharges the water table.  Water that evaporates makes rain locally and elsewhere, sharing moisture with surrounding areas and those downwind, which West of the Rockies, is uphill and upstream, filling our creeks and rivers.
• ·        Cities in the West have become dry, weedy, seedy and fire-prone from lack of watering.

·        Poor people presently pay more per unit overall for household water, as they tend to live many to a house.  Those who can afford to live one or two to a house usually do so and pay less.

·        Young families also pay more for household water, as children use a lot of water.

·        Everyone pays more to use less water under the city’s present and proposed rate system. Paying for overhead by selling high-priced units has resulted in rising base and unit rates as less is used.

·        Subsidize the household base rate for those who would be unable to pay it by using the franchise fee that the city charges us to use its own right-of-way.

·        Keep prices and plant finances stable by paying for fixed costs in fixed rates and only variable unit costs in the unit price. 

    Email the Grants Pass City Council and Mayor: mayorcouncil@grantspassoregon.gov.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener               541-955-9040                 rycke@gardener.com