Rycke Brown,
Natural Gardener
1415
SW Bridge Street
Grants
Pass, Oregon 97526
541-955-9040
Memo Regarding Petitions to Reform City Water and
Sewer Rates
Submitted
5/22/2020, revised 6/12/2020
Mayor,
Council, and Manager:
A
reminder of what your staff was supposed to be evaluating and calculating:
Price
Water to Sell.
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. 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. Debt service would be
paid by a fixed fee and sunset when the debt is paid.
Price Sewer Fairly.
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.
In this memo, “Petitioner” is the
chief petitioner, writing this memo. “Petitioners” are the over 1000 people who
signed onto the above Petition, as well as Price Sewer
Fairly, including circulators. Petitioner prefers to use the
term “unit rates” when talking about the unit price of water, because “usage
rates” can easily be confused with the amount of water customers use,
collectively or individually.
Staff
did not calculate any rates; they asked FCS Group to do it for them. FCS begins with “Issue,” “The City of Grants
Pass is interested in evaluating the impact on the water utility’s rate
structure if fixed utility costs were fully recovered by fixed meter ‘base
rates.’…”
Staff
apparently did not ask FCS to evaluate the actual water petition, only the
first sentence of it: “We would assign all fixed overhead costs into fixed
base rates.” The next sentence says,
“Only marginal unit costs would be assigned to a single unit rate.” On page 2 of FCS’ memo, “Exhibit 1: Current
and Alternative Rate Schedule (Inside City),” “Usage Rates per Unit (100 cubic
feet)” they show a rate schedule with all the unit rates of the present system for
various customer classes and use amounts, under the existing rates and under “fixed
cost structure” rates for the same classes and tiered use allowances.
Staff
did not ask FCS to configure the sewer petition at all and had not evaluated it
themselves at the time of their memo.
But Staff says, “We stand ready to provide additional information or
provide revised scenarios as needed.”
Both
are needed, and the whole thing needs to be done by Staff. FCS has a conflict of interest in configuring
the rates for either of these petitions.
The calculations for both water and sewer rates in these proposals can
be done by any competent bookkeeper. We
need not pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to rate consultants like FCS for basic
bookwork.
Price
Water to Sell calls for only “a single unit rate”
for all customers to end price discrimination between customer types,
locations and amounts of use. Customers
feel put upon when they must pay more or higher unit rates than others.
“Issue”
continues, “Currently, approximately half of the water utility revenues are
generated from base rates while the remainder is generated from
consumption-based usage rates (this excludes revenue generated by the Water
Plant Replacement Fee, Additional Unit Charges, and Fire-Standby Charges).”
The
Water Plant Replacement Fee is included in the petition and is supposed to
cover all of the debt service for the plant, excluding only the 18% that can
and should be charged to the Urban Renewal District (URD). We were told by Staff, when that fee was
instituted by Council, that it would not be increased by inflation and will go
away when the debt is fully paid.
We
were not told, but Petitioner since learned from our recently retired Finance
Director while circulating these petitions, that only 60% of that debt service
would be covered by that fee when it is fully implemented. With 18% paid by the URD, that leaves 22%
being loaded equally onto our base and unit rates, where it will rise yearly by
the CPI and whenever costs outstrip revenues and will never go away until the rate
system is reformed.
Petitioner
wants 82%, all of the debt service but what is paid by the URD, to be in
that Water Plant Replacement Fee. Such fee
would be applied to sewer debt service as well and such debt service would be taken
off the base and unit rates of both systems.
The fee therefore should be figured into the mock-up of the proposals in
these petitions.
Those
“Additional Unit Charges” that FCS didn’t bother with are extra unit rates paid
only by some people in some locations and situations in both water and sewer. They should be folded into the single unit
rate for water and the base rate for sewer as called for by Petitioners.
“Fire
Standby Charges” are listed on the City website as “Standby Meter Charges” on
the Comprehensive Fee Schedule, page 17. It is an extra base rate for certain
businesses for fire suppression that requires an extra meter and is a separate
service, which justifies its own base rate.
But we notice that there are Standby Charges among the unit rates in
Appendix B in the FCS memo, and they are higher than any rates but the 4th
tier for single family homeowners, although customers required to have Standby
meters have no control over how much water is used to put out a fire.
Under
“Considerations,” FCS begins:
Most of the water
utilities costs are fixed, especially in the near-term planning horizon (e.g.
staffing, supplies, maintenance, debt service, etc.). Aligning base rates with
fixed costs would increase base rates and decrease usage rates. This would
increase stability for the water utility, but it would also reduce the amount
of the water bill that customers have control over – the usage rate portion of
the bill. This change may reduce a
customer’s incentive to conserve water, especially during seasons of peak water
usage, since the usage rate would be much lower than it usually is.
This
is mostly true enough. Petitioners’
proposal would provide stability for the plant finances, and likewise, though
not stated, for customer finances. The
bill would vary little from summer to winter, would stay that way, and would
not increase faster than inflation of actual costs of the plant.
That
it would reduce the high cost of using the water and increase use thereof is a
feature that is most attractive to Petitioners, allowing everyone to water
their yards for beauty, growing food, humidity, coolness, easier maintenance
and fire safety and suppression and not worry about using so much water that
the bill rises drastically. With a
single unit rate, we would also be able to house many people in our
single-family homes without paying more per unit for water than those who can
afford to live alone or as a couple.
The
present “control” by the customer of the larger portion of their water bill by
not using as much water as they would like is a mirage, a constantly moving
goal that is never reached, because the half of overhead costs that are presently
paid by use do not go away when that use drops, a drop which our present rate
structure is designed to create, rationing the use of water by price. Anyone’s rationing is paid for by all
customers, with future raises in both the base and unit rates, which causes
more drop in use. It is better for each
customer to fully pay their full share of the overhead up front in the base
rate than to have to pay for it piecemeal and have higher rates every year
imposed on all because some people, even themselves, cut use to save
money.
Under
Petitioner’s proposal, no one has to use any water to pay the overhead. If the plant goes down for an extended period
due to a breakdown (not out of the question with our breaking-up plant during
the building of our new one), as long as customers pay their base rate, we
would keep the overhead paid. Nobody’s
use or lack of use affects other customers’ bills.
Under
“Considerations,” page 1, FCS tells us,
The City’s water rates
are based on the cost-of-service methodology defined in the American Water
Works Association’s (AWWA) M-1 Manual, Principles of Water Rates, Fees, and
Charges. Recovering fixed costs in the
base rate, while intuitive, is inconsistent with such cost of service
principles, which assign cost recovery in rates by functions and causation, not
by the fixed or variable nature of the cost.
Staff
begins their memo:
Calculating
water rates is a complex and often mysterious exercise. The City of Grants Pass, like many cities in
the US has elected to follow the American Water Works Association (AWWA) Manual
of Water Supply Practices M1: Principles of Water Rates, Fees, and
Charges. This manual is the standard
most utilities use when developing their water rate charges.
This
is why calculating water rates has become so complex and mysterious that we
hire consultants like FCS. “Most everybody
else is doing it” is not a defense of overpricing a monopoly product or
service. If cleaned, pressurized water
and sanitary sewer was not a monopoly, cities wouldn’t be able to charge their
customers like they do under AWWA principles.
What
differential base and unit pricing does is remove some of the burden of the
overhead from some customers, while loading it onto others, dividing the people
against each other. Most cities these
days ration water by price, and they can do so without following AWWA
principles, simply by having a relatively low base rate and one high unit rate,
like Redding, which burned when their single unit rate was only 2.5 cents
higher than our top rate was at the time.
(It’s still $1.425. Maybe enough
customers decided that watering is necessary, regardless of price. Or maybe the city raised the base rate
instead of the unit rate, to stabilize the price.) See Exhibit A, “City water and sewer rate
comparisons.”
Following
AWWA principles requires hiring consultants like FCS to configure water rates
to take responsibility from Staff for discriminatory charges. The AWWA is probably composed of such rate
consultants. But our City Council is the
regulator for our water rates, regardless of whether Council or Staff
understand them. It is better if Council
and Staff understand them. AWWA and
Staff are not accountable to city voters.
In
paragraph two, Staff says, “The balancing act that utilities must overcome is
ensuring that their fixed costs adequately cover the non-variable costs while
not punitively pricing low water users
out of the ability to afford their service.”
The
service we are selling is both the availability and use of the water. Overpricing use makes people unable to afford
to use the water as they wish, which can make them low water users, but not
by choice.
There
is no kindness in giving people cheap access with a low base rate and then
charging them through the nose to use the water and jacking up both rates to cover
overhead. Water is life, cleanliness,
health, fire safety and quality of life.
It should be priced to use it freely; we should not be forced to pay more
for use than it costs to pump, clean and pump more of it.
Since
the tiered rate system was first implemented in 2006, dropping the base rates
and creating much higher unit rates, tiered for single family homes only, our
base rate has climbed from $8.30 to $20.20 in 2020. Unit rates have risen by a similar
proportion, but unit charges by a much higher amount, for those who use the
water to water their yards, and for those who live many to a house and use a
lot of household water.
Looking
at other cities that changed to water-rationing rate systems before we did
shows how ridiculously high unit charges can get over time because of chasing
the overhead. Look for cities paying
more than us in Exhibit A.
Under
“Impacts on Customer bills,” FCS says,
A single-family customer
that uses 10 units of water is currently billed $29.60; $20.20 for a ¾”
meter and a usage charge of $9.40 (5 x $0.63 + (5 x $1.25). A single-family customer that uses 4 units of
water is currently billed $22.72 because their usage charge is only
$2.52.
However, under the “fixed
cost” rate structure, the 10-unit customer would be billed $37.02 and
the 4-unit customer would be billed $35.59. They both would pay $35.07 for the ¾ inch
meter charge and the 10-unit customer only pays $1.43 more despite using 6 more
units of water.
It
is interesting that FCS only talks about low-use water customers, who are well
below the 16 units that Staff has determined is the point at which higher users
would save money over the present system because of low unit rates and lower
users would pay more because of a higher base rate. They will likely be closer yet and more customers
would save more money under a single unit rate system.
This
comparison is an example of how a system of low base and high differential unit
rates plays off water and sewer users against each other, with the assumption
being that some people should pay more than others for the overhead costs. Just because you have been overcharging
everyone for use, some more than others, and undercharging for the base rate
for nearly 15 years doesn’t make it right to have changed to that system in the
first place and doesn’t mean that we can’t change it back.
On
the other hand, under Petitioner’s proposal, 4-unit single-family-home
customers would likely start watering their yards and use at least 10 units
in summer, wouldn’t be scrimping on water the rest of the year, and both may
well be more satisfied with their water use and cost. If this example is a winter bill, the single-family-home
customers who use 10 units because of more people in their homes wouldn’t be
paying more for household use than their 4-unit neighbors and would also be
able to water their yards in summer.
Single family homes and PUDs come with yards, and all of them need to be
watered and gardened for weed control and fire safety.
After “Considerations,” FCS asks, “What Costs to
recover from Usage Rate vs. Base Rate?” They answer,
It is assumed that the
following costs are ‘variable’ for this analysis:
• All electricity used at the water treatment plant;
• All chlorine and chemicals used at the water treatment
plant;
• One-fifth of water treatment plant staff.
… Considering this
profile, this analysis will result in fixed rates that generate about 90% of
the rate revenue target and usage rates that generate 10% of the rate revenue
target.”
FCS does not explain why one-fifth of water treatment
staff should be considered variable. Staff
says, on page 3 of their memo, “Current plant staffing only allows for double
coverage (I.E. two people per shift) for 10 hours a day in the wintertime.
Winter production only allows the plant to run at 5,500 gallons per minute or
3.3 million gallons in a 10-hour shift.”
If another worker needs to be hired because we
suddenly start using more water in winter as it costs less to use it, that use
is unlikely to go back down and that worker should be considered overhead, just
like the rest of plant staff. Changing
the rate system removes an artificial impediment on water use.
What
is utterly neglected in the memos by FCS and Staff are the benefits of using
water, and the costs to quality of life that result when people cut back on use. In the ‘80s, nearly every occupied property
was watered, mowed, hedged, weeded, and many of us grew food and flowers and
shared produce with neighbors and friends. This was a clean, green, beautiful and orderly
city.
In
1985, we had rain nearly every weekend of the summer because water vapor from millions
of gallons per day going through sprinklers and transpiring plants caused
clouds and rain to form, particularly thunderstorms. The ‘80s was a wet, cool decade, the height
of sprinkler irrigation around the world.
In
2013, Petitioner did an analysis of summer weather in Grants Pass over 30
years, from 1983-2012, attached, that shows midsummer rainfall fell 0.09 inch
on average per decade in the ‘90s and the 2000s, as water unit rates climbed
and use dropped. It would be interesting
to continue that study for the years since, as we have only dried out more in
the last decade. See Exhibit B, “Statistics Show Our County is
Drying.”
In
the ‘80s, one could tell the poorer parts of town only by the condition of
houses rather than by ugly, littered, dangerously dry yards. We didn’t have yard and weed fires in the
city. We had wet thunderstorms, not dry lightning. We didn’t have forest fires anywhere close to
our city, because our irrigation humidity was spreading out all around it. The forests near town were full of greenery
and life, and we didn’t have to cut the brush to prevent forest fires.
These
are only the effects of watering on landscape maintenance, rain and fires. Water’s role in health and hygiene is
critical, too, and forcing large households to scrimp on water for cleaning and
toilet flushing is not good for health, hygiene and quality of life.
Staff
created two charts on page 2 from FCS’s charts.
It is clear that those who use 16 units or less of water in summer, about
half, would pay more for water service in the summer, and all but about 4% would
pay more in the winter.
These
charts are one of the best arguments for reforming the water rates fully, as
they show that the customer’s bill will vary little from winter to summer under
FCS’ hybrid “fixed cost system.” It will
vary even less under Petitioner’s proposal of a single unit rate, both within
the year and between customers. Under the present system, about half the people
pay higher unit charges in summer to cover overhead, both for other people who use
less than 16 units in summer and for the 96% who use less than that in winter.
The
charts leave out the top tier of water, 26 or more units, cutting off at 25
units, which 27.5% of single-family home customers use more than, in summer,
creating a nicely symmetrical graph. It
would be interesting to have the full graph, in which the “present rates” line
curves sharply upward in cost to the consumers and it isn’t so nicely symmetrical.
Staff
concludes that most single-family-home customers will pay more for water under FCS’
hybrid “fixed cost” system than the present system, apparently relying on
winter use to make that argument. But it
is an irrelevant argument. If there were
only a small percentage or a huge percentage paying higher unit charges to cover
overhead for other people, the city would still be overcharging them greatly
and undercharging the rest. The system
would still be in a vicious pricing spiral, chasing the overhead and never
catching up as long as customers keep cutting use.
Staff’s separate graphs for winter and summer use show
how many of us irrigate, and how much we depend on those who continue to
irrigate under our present system, in which we punish people for using more
water. They show that our present rate
system is designed to pay most of the year’s overhead in the summer, which
requires the City to save money from the previous summer and borrow against
next summer to pay winter, spring and fall overhead.
Paying for all overhead in the base would obviate the
need for such saving and borrowing. It
would give the city and customers much more even bills year-round and lower
rates overall than the present system would, over the years into perpetuity,
which most people would appreciate.
Staff follows the two charts with:
To put this volume of
water into perspective, 16 units of water is 12,238 gallons. A swimming pool that is 12x24x5 holds 10,800
gallons (14.4 units). A typical large water tanker that you see on
the road holds less than 5,000 gallons (6.68 units). A yard sprinkler running at 2 gallons per
minute 24 hours a day would use 3.8 units of water. A typical shower is around 20 gallons. It would take 598 showers to equal 16 units
of water.
This does not provide perspective on how people really
use water at home. Let’s take another look. Petitioner has 8 people in our house. The neighbor to the East has 7. The neighbor directly across the street has
8. The neighbors on each side of them
have similar numbers. The neighbor to
the West of us has 7 or 8 people living there.
All but the neighbor to the East have children in their houses; that one
is an adult foster care home.
Single family homes in lower-class neighborhoods are
often full of people sharing housing and utility costs: families with children;
multi-generational families; families made up of friends living together to
share expenses, businesses like foster care and day care. These are customers drinking, cooking,
washing dishes, cleaning indoors and out, showering, doing laundry, and
maybe even watering their yards.
Petitioner used an average of 12 units of water per
month last winter, which only about 8% of single-family-residence customers used
as much or more than. We used 13 the
year before. We are now in tier 3
year-round, except for late spring, summer, and early fall, when we are in tier
4. We are paying more per unit than 92%
of customers in winter, close to 100% in summer at over 50 units last July. Our summer use was left off staff’s graph. Last month’s use was 37 units, as watering
season started early.
This brings us to the second to the last paragraph of
the Staff memo, which begins:
At the time of this memo,
staff has not evaluated the impacts on the sewer rate of conversion to a
complete flat rate. The [current] rate
was designed to appropriately charge those customers who impact the system and
reward those who do not….
So it rewards those who are dead? Everyone alive who uses the toilet, sinks,
showers or bathtubs impacts the sewer system.
We have no control of how much waste we send down the pipes; we have
some control of how much water we put down the pipes to carry that waste to the
plant. It is interesting how often we are
told about sewage clogging the pumps these days.
Under the present rate system, customers who ration
water in the house to save money on sewer service impact the system and other
customers more than those who don’t by making the sewage more concentrated and
harder to pump, as well as bumping up the rates for everybody to cover the
overhead.
Sewage
collection and treatment are a mandated service for public health, not a
commodity like clean water. No one gains
anything by use of the sewer system. The
city collectively avoids the evil of pollution and sickness, for everyone in
the city and downriver, by collecting all the sewage, cleaning it to drinking
water standards, and putting it back into the river. Every bit of it has to be cleaned, and we have
no choice about how much waste we produce.
It
is not appropriate to charge any customer any more than any other for such a public
service. Charging unit costs for sewer
is a recent development in water-rationing strategy, and several cities listed
in Exhibit A do not do so, including Medford, Portland, Santa Rosa and Redding.
Lastly,
the second paragraph on page three of the staff memo begins:
The City’s current rate
structure does encourage a certain level of conservation. This is a condition of the city’s water
rights that are so important to the long-term growth of the City….
Petitioner
was told in 2018 by Staff that our water rights can be taken away if we didn’t
charge unit charges for water. I asked
where in state law that is stated. He
was unable to tell me and asked me to look for it. I read both water law and the Aquabook and
could find no conditions on rates. On
page 36 of the Aquabook, it says that, if the city saves a lot of water, wants
to use that part of its water right for something that is not currently within its
permit and the Water Board disagrees, it can take that part of that water
right. That is the only reason mentioned
to take away part of a water right, besides complete non-use of a portion of it
over at least 5 years. (page 35) Our water right is in danger only from not
using part of our water right for too long.
Using only up to 15 million gallons a day when we used to use 20
million, we are in danger of losing 5 million gallons per day.
There
is no requirement in law to price water in any particular way. On page 37, it mandates that cities that sell
water file a conservation plan, but there is no penalty for non-compliance,
unlike long-term failure to use part of the water. It does not say that the Water Board would
even have to approve the plan.
The
City of Grants Pass has filed water conservation plans that features water
rationing by price. But we are in charge
of our plan. We can change it to reflect
what is best for the City and its customers.
The City Council is the only political body that regulates our water
rates, providing accountability to City voters.
Indeed,
conservation by water rationing in West Coast states has only resulted in
drought. When Petitioner lived in Grants
Pass for two years in the ‘80s, we had wet thunderstorms nearly every weekend
of the summer of ’85, when nearly everyone was watering their properties, and
the town was clean, green and beautiful. In 1986, we had little snowpack in our
mountains come spring and were told not to water our yards or wash our cars. That rationing was on everyone, not by price,
but it was still counter-productive. We
had 104 days without rain that summer, because we weren’t watering enough to
make rain. The next year, we had 98,
likely for the same reasons. (See
Exhibit C, “Days Without Rain in Grants Pass,” courtesy of The Daily Courier,
9-28-2018 with side notes added by Petitioner.
Real
conservation of fresh water doesn’t let it run out to sea without using it a
few times along the way; storing part of it in soil and lakes and ponds;
evaporating it with sprinklers and misters; transpiring it by growing plants;
and letting it humidify the area and sharing it with other places as it blows
on the prevailing wind, uphill and upstream, keeping it in circulation over the
land, sending it across the continent on the prevailing western wind, causing
rain along the way.
Beavers
are prime water conservationists. They
do it with dams, ponds, and canals, storing water in ponds and soil that
trickles out over the dry season and keeps creeks and rivers running and plants
growing. When the first European
trappers came, beaver swamps dominated every creek and rivulet. By the time they were trapped out, the inland
West had become a gullied desert. Where
they have been restored, they increase water in creeks and fish survival due to
increased flow and decreased water temperature.1
We
do it with big, cement dams like Lost Creek Dam, keeping river levels up and
temperatures down for fish and for watering our properties, growing plants and,
like beaver, holding part of that water in the soil in the process. We did it a lot more when water was cheap to
use, and we used it freely.
Staff
continues,
The Pacific Northwest has
traditionally had a large amount of water, but one doesn’t have to look far to
see that drought is not something that is unknown to us. Encouraging responsible use of our precious
water is key to the long-term health of the Rogue River and the flora and fauna
that call it home…
So
how is that working out? Grants Pass has
been rationing water by price for over 20 years, seriously for nearly 15. California has been at it since the late ‘80s
or early ’90s. California cities started
burning first and most. We’ve had to cut our brush in the forests to keep fire
danger down, which is not good for the plants and animals that live there. We’ve been getting increasingly smoked out
since 2000 and big fires have gotten closer over the last decade.
In
the mid-eighties, we were first told that fresh water was a “precious”
commodity; that only 2 percent of water on earth is fresh; and that we must
conserve it, in all times and places, apparently, regardless of supply and our
need to use it.
Water
is not precious; it is vital, a necessity of life and living well. “Precious” things are not necessities, they
are rare and expensive luxuries, like gems and gold. Water is among the most common and naturally
recycled of resources and rationing its use by price only makes our customers
poorer in health and wealth. People used
to grow food all over this city and share it with neighbors. Now we have a food bank growing food on a
city farm using unclean water because not enough people are growing it at home.
Look
at Exhibit A and check out the water rates in cities where drought is uncommon,
like Seattle, Washington and Portland, Maine.
Goshen, Indiana is interesting, in that its top tier rate is on the
lowest use, targeting household use and reserving lower prices for industry in
a city that gets many monsoon thunderstorms, needs no irrigation most years,
and doesn’t need to ration water. Youngstown, OH has their top tier in the
middle, along with a negative base rate to give a modicum of relief.
Portland,
Oregon is no slouch when it comes to high water unit rates. A friend of my daughter moved to Portland,
eventually rented a house, and started gardening. Portland bills their water customers every
two months. Her first bill after
watering her yard for two months was over $800!
Portland
has a negative base rate for those who can prove their poverty, to offset the
high cost of using their water. The
links at the end of Exhibit A can help you explore the variety in some water
rate systems around this country, but so far, every one of them is rationing by
price in some fashion, which only shows how fast and far a bad idea can be spread.
Since
water that goes down the drain is cleaned to drinking water standards and put
back in the river, there is no need to conserve household water. The state’s interest is in providing
sufficiently cold water for fish. The
only water that we use indoors that doesn’t go down the drain is what we
breathe out, and the breath and waste of our animals, but that doesn’t mean
that it is lost to the river. It goes
into the air, like the water that evaporates or transpires when we irrigate.
Irrigation
water is hard to waste. We were told in Landscape Management at RCC in 2000
that sprinklers evaporate half of what they throw and “Evaporation is waste.” But evaporation is not waste; it is the first
step in the water cycle, without which we get no clouds or rain.
The
Pacific Ocean is cold on this side, as are the eastern sides of all oceans
outside the tropics. It doesn’t
evaporate readily in summer and often sets up high pressure in winter that
causes sometimes weeks of fog in our inland valleys. The western sides of continents outside the
tropics tend to be naturally dry.
Irrigation
water goes into the soil, where some of it is pulled up by plants and transpired
through the leaves, a form of evaporation.
Evaporation can cool objects and air down to 40 degrees F, the
temperature at which it starts evaporating.
What isn’t used by plants is stored in the soil, providing more
evaporation as it wicks to the surface. Some of it leaches down into the water
table and raises it. Higher water in the
water table flows to creeks and rivers, seeps into them and raises their level. Many of our creeks that ran all year in the
‘80s go dry now because that extra water isn’t there.
Sprinklers are particularly efficient in creating
evaporation, as they throw water not only in the air but on plants, soil, and pavements,
from which it evaporates and cools wet objects and the air as they dry. We live where rivers run to the West, into the
prevailing wind, which sends our watering vapor uphill and upstream, making
rain and filling our creeks, rivers, and aquifers. After cooling things down, vapor
can share water with other places downwind and upstream, even over the Rockies,
where it can make clouds and fall as rain.
See Exhibit D, “Watering fields
in California boosts rainfall in Southwest.”
The
easiest way to share water with other places is by using it first. When it doesn’t blow away, it can create wet
thunderstorms right where it was generated.
This happened frequently in the ‘80s, since most watering occurs when
air pressure is high.
2019
was an exception that proves the rule that constant rationing of water creates
drought. Congress legalized hemp growing
in late 2018, which changed our weather in 2019, as hemp was planted all over
Josephine County and Oregon, often in places that had not grown more than hay
for a long time, due to Oregon’s land use laws that left a lot of farmland
fallow or nearly so after 30 years. A
lot of marijuana farms were also converted to hemp and watered their whole
property instead of the small canopy allowed for marijuana in Oregon.
Out
of that, we got a few good, wet thunderstorms and no fires in Josephine County
caused by dry lightning. The last storm,
in September, looked like an irrigation-season-ending rain with the look and
feel of fall in it, and irrigation abruptly stopped as the combined cannabis
harvests commenced. The rest of
September, October and November were clear and dry. December and January
brought us winter rains, but low snowpack.
February and March were dry. We
finally have been getting some rain in April, May, and now June, likely again
because of hemp growers. But irrigation season started in March this year, and
the city sold a record amount of water in March and April, despite high unit
rates.
Against
the background of water-rationed cities around the world, our county’s
increased irrigation made a difference in this county and we could tell when it
stopped last year by the effect on our weather.
Vapor travels, but it first makes a big difference where it is generated.
Staff
continues,
Removing the impediment
to unhindered water use could have the effect of increasing the city’s
consumption. While not an immediate
problem, increasing consumption will require the treatment plant to be
constructed larger to meet the increasing demand that the revised rate could
place on the system.
Last
I heard, we were using up to 15 million gallons per day in mid-summer, and the
plant has a capacity of 20. The new
plant is supposed to be at least 20 million gallons as well. It can probably handle what we would do under
a pricing-to-sell system for quite a few years.
It will take time to get people back into the watering habit. The more infill we build, the less property
is available to water, as more is taken up by pavements and buildings.
Preventing
the need for a new plant was probably on the minds of the Manager and Council
when the change to tiered rates was started in 2005, just before the Great Recession
hit. But it started falling apart before
ten years had passed, and now we will build a new one.
The
eventual need for expansion is why we are supposed to be planning for easy
expansion with the new plant. Under a
system that pays the overhead only from base rates, we can do it without making
customers go dry or go broke. Under a
system that has only one unit rate, we will once again pay the same unit price
for the water we use, and the same within our service size to have a water
plant.
So,
let us write a new water conservation plan for our new water plant that
features using our water, keeping it circulating in and over the land, rather
than losing so much of it to the ocean. Pass
water and sewer rates that price water to sell and price sewer fairly so
everyone can afford water their yards and everyone again pays the same charge
for sewer within their service size. And
build a new water plant that we can easily expand as needed.
1.
Ben Godfarb, Eager: the surprising,
secret life of beavers and why they matter, Chelsea Green Publishing, White
River Junction, VT, London, UK, 10, 103, 110-114, 165, 170-171.
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Exhibit A, page 2
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work down the page to Utilities and Sanitation>Sewer
rates>Sewer rates
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https://www.pwd.org/rates
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https://www.cityofredding.org/home/showdocument?id=10304
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