Ratepayers Utility Rate Board Petition: filed; approved; amended; received Ballot Title

 

Ratepayers Utility Rate Board Petition

 Whereas utilities are vital services with huge, spread-out infrastructure and very high overhead costs, so they are natural monopolies and must therefore be regulated to keep rates equitable;

Whereas, for over 60 years, base rates were set to pay the monthly overhead bills of our water system with a monthly charge, so the overhead was always fully paid;

Whereas unit rates, to pay expenses that rise and fall with use of water, were set to allow everyone to use as much water as we wished, so cheap that we thought of water as free from the faucet; 

Whereas our sewage treatment system charged only base rates to cover all expenses, as sewage cannot be directly measured, and all sewage must be cleaned to drinking water standard and returned to the river;

Whereas our City Councils over the last 30 years have forgotten their duty to keep our utility rates affordable for all beneficial uses while covering all costs, and are instead rationing our utilities by price, with base rates that can’t cover the monthly overhead, and high unit rates designed to discourage use;

Whereas our City Council voted to charge unit rates for sewage, by averaging our winter water use and charging us that many units every month at sewage unit rates, much higher than water unit rates; 

Whereas people cannot reduce their bodily waste, but they can run less water down the drain.  Less water to carry waste causes sewage pumps to clog;

Whereas usage drops because of high unit rates, the overhead cannot be fully paid, and both base and unit rates are hiked to cover the overhead, causing even less use and more rate hikes, in a vicious pricing spiral that can only end when we cannot cut use of water any further or the rationing rate system is abandoned;

Whereas water vapor is the great moderator of our weather, holding heat by thermal mass, cloud blanketing and condensation, and cooling by evaporation, precipitation, and cloud shading;

Whereas rationing rates for water have been imposed in cities around the world.  Less irrigation makes less humidity, less rain, higher highs, lower lows, drought, flooding, and huge fires.  These are desert conditions, a return to the weather after beaver were nearly wiped out and before water plants were built;

Whereas our City Council and Manager are using our utility bills to collect fees for non-utilities and a franchise fee for the water utility we own and operate, which goes into the general fund.  Now our Council is considering making police a utility.   This destroys the meaning of utilities.  If people and their equipment can be called a utility and put on our utility bills, our whole city government could be called a utility;

Therefore we, the electors of the City of Grants Pass, petition to amend our City Charter by adding this Chapter VIII to the Grants Pass City Charter, with ORDINANCES becoming CHAPTER IX and PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS, CHAPTER X:

 

CHAPTER VIII: RATEPAYERS UTILITY RATE BOARD

       Section 1. POWERS VESTED.  The power to define utilities and to set their rates shall be vested in the Ratepayers Utility Rate Board (Ratepayers Board or Board).  Only Ratepayers-Board-defined City utilities shall be included on City of Grants Pass utility bills.

       Section 2.  COMPOSITION. The Ratepayers Board shall be composed of five members, elected from Grants Pass electors in non-partisan elections.  As their first order of business each year, a Chairperson shall be elected by the Ratepayers Board from their ranks, to run their meetings and to sign and deliver utility rates to the City Manager.

       Section 3.  TERMS OF OFFICE.   Five Ratepayers Board members shall be elected in the general election following the passage of this Charter amendment.  Seats 1, 2, and 3 shall have a two-year term the first election and may stand for reelection in the general election in November of the year their terms end.  Seats 4 and 5 shall serve four years and may stand for reelection in the general election in November of the year their terms end. 

       Thereafter, all Ratepayers Board members shall serve 4-year terms and may be elected in general elections for seats 1, 2, and 3, followed in the November general election two years later by election of seats 4 and 5.

      Section 4.  VACANCIES.  A Ratepayers Board seat shall be declared vacant upon resignation, death, disability, or the member ceasing to be qualified for the office.  Vacancies occurring more than 100 days before the next general election shall be filled at that election.  Vacancies less than 100 days before the next general election will be filled at the next May election.  In each case, the new member will serve the rest of the term.  Each vacancy that occurs during rate setting will reduce the quorum by one for that year.

      Section 5.  QUALIFICATIONS.  City of Grants Pass electors who have lived in the City of Grants Pass for at least a year at the time of filing, use one or more City utilities and are not in a household that includes any paid or unpaid elected or appointed City employee or contractor in the previous 2 years, are qualified to serve on this Board.

       Section 6.   COMPENSATION.  Ratepayers Board members shall be paid $100 per diem for attendance the first year to set rates, up to 5 days per year.  The starting date and meeting room shall be set by the City for the convenience of the City.  Board members shall be paid on the day after utility rates have been set and sent to the City Manager.  Per diem shall be increased for the next year by the CPI from the previous year, after all other rates are set. 

      Section 7.  VOTING.  Voting on rates shall be by roll call and the ayes and nays shall be recorded in a journal.  Three members shall constitute a quorum unless a vacancy occurs during rate setting, per section 4.  Absent members shall not be paid per diem for days they are absent.  Lack of quorum shall cause rate setting to be extended until a quorum has met for five days and rates have been set.  No per diem will be paid for days that a quorum is not met.

       Section 8.  PRINCIPLES OF RATESETTING.  Ratepayers Board members shall take an oath to abide by these fiscal principles before setting rates each year:   

A.      Monthly base rates for water shall pay all overhead, expenses that do not rise and fall with the volume of cleaned water produced.  Base Rates shall be based proportionally on water service size, per connection.  Base rates shall rise by actual inflation of the previous year’s overhead costs over the year before.

B.      A single unit rate for water shall pay for all unit costs, which rise and fall with the volume of cleaned water produced.  Water unit rates shall be total unit cost the previous year, divided by the number of total units produced the previous year.  Water units shall be 1000 gallons for easy figuring of unit rates. 

C.      Base rates shall cover all sewage treatment costs, with rates to be based proportionally on sewer service size, per connection.  Sewer base rates shall rise by actual inflation of sewer costs in the previous year over the year before.

D.     Bulk water haulers shall pay the ¾ inch base rate per month, plus the standard unit rate per 1000 gallons of their loads.

      Section 9.  RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CITY MANAGER AND COUNCIL.  Two weeks before Rate-Setting Week, the City Manager shall send each member of the Ratepayers Board: detailed monthly expenses for the preceding two years for Board-defined City utilities; the size and number of water and sewer connections, separately divided by utility and class, based on the size of their water and sewer connections; the number of 1000-gallon units produced by the water plant; and the previous year’s Consumer Price Index.  Overhead and unit cost expenses shall include a contingency fund to cover actual inflation of expenses during the year and a separate maintenance contingency fund. 

After utility rates are set and delivered to the City Manager, the Manager shall submit the utility rates to the City Council.  The Council shall approve the rates of the utilities as an ordinance at their next business meeting.  Said ordinance shall not be vetoed.

-end-

Notice of receipt of Ballot Title 

The City of Grants Pass Elections Officer received the ballot title for an initiative to establish a Ratepayers Utility Rate Board. 

CAPTION: Amends Grants Pass Charter: establishes a Ratepayers Utility Rate Board. 

QUESTION: Shall a Ratepayers Utility Rate Board be established in the City of Grants Pass? 

SUMMARY: Amends the Grants Pass Charter. Creates a Ratepayers Utility Rate Board to define “utilities” and set utility rates in Grants Pass. Establishes the board’s composition and terms of office. Outlines qualifications and procedure for filling vacancies. Sets a per diem of $100 for attendance up to five days a year. Increases the per diem by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the previous year. Establishes voting procedures. Requires board members to take an oath to abide by board-created rate-setting principles. Prior to Rate-Setting Week, requires the City Manager to send the board detailed monthly expenses for the preceding two years for utilities, the size and number of water and sewer connections, the number of 1000-gallon units produced by the Water Plant, and the prior year’s CPI. Requires that overhead and unit cost expenses include a contingency fund and a separate maintenance fund. Requires the City Manager to deliver the rates to the City Council. Requires the City Council to approve the rates as an ordinance at the next business meeting. Ordinance will be vetoproof. 

It has been determined that this measure meets the single subject requirement and the municipal legislation requirement of the Oregon Constitution Article IV, Section 1, (2)(d) and (5), and ORS 250.270. The ballot title may be reviewed in the City of Grants Pass Administration Office, 101 NW ‘A’ Street, Grants Pass Oregon 97526 between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Pursuant to ORS 250.035, 250.275, and 250.296, any elector dissatisfied with this ballot title may petition the Josephine County Circuit Court seeking a different title and stating the reasons the title is insufficient, not concise, or unfair. That petition must be filed no later than the seventh business day after the title was filed with the City Elections Officer. The ballot title was filed with the City Elections Officer on September 1, 2023. Petitions for judicial review are due no later than September 12, 2023. 

Karen Frerk 

City Recorder (Elections Officer)

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We got the above Notice of Ballot Title yesterday via email, and it was published on September 1st in the Grants Pass Daily Courier. 

 I have to appeal it to the Circuit Court.  There is one factual error, and one unfair lack of information regarding the contingency fund in the Summary.  

 The factual error is, "Requires board members to take an oath to abide by board-created rate setting principles." (emphasis added) This regards "Section 8, PRINCIPLES OF RATE SETTING.  Ratepayers Board members shall take an oath to abide by these fiscal principles before setting rates each year:..."

 These principles will be written into the Charter when this initiative passes.  The Ratepayers Board will not even exist until City voters elect its members.  No board created these principles.  I did.  After it passes, only the voters may change these principles.  The Board will only define utilities and follow these principles to set the utility rates, which is a mathematical exercise akin to what the City's bookkeeper did before the City started rationing water by rates and hired a consultant to justify it and set the rates, for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 Interesting that "errors of fact" are not included in the reasons to appeal a ballot title.  I guess that they expected an attorney to do a better job of summarizing facts.  "Board-created" needs to be deleted.  It is not concise; it is false and therefore unnecessary.

 The second error, one of insufficiency and unfairness, is: "Requires that overhead and unit cost expenses include a contingency fund and a separate maintenance fund."

 This summarizes the last sentence in the first paragraph of Section 9.  It is missing the reason for the first contingency fund, and that both funds are contingency funds: "Overhead and unit cost expenses shall include a contingency fund to cover actual inflation of expenses during the year and a separate maintenance contingency fund."   (Emphasis on missing words)

Telling us about "a contingency fund" and not including the reason for it may leave voters wondering what it is for, making them suspicious.  Too many people may not read the actual measure to find out.  Not only that, but that sentence includes two contingency funds, but mentions only one as a contingency fund.

If using the wording in the measure would take too many words, they could say, "Requires two contingency funds, one for actual inflation of expenses during the year and another for maintenance contingencies."

 I must file the appeal on or before September 12th.  There will be a filing fee, probably $281.

Before that, I will prepare a Referendum Petition, along with cover pages and signature sheets, for September 7th, to file the day after the Council finishes passing their Public Safety Utility Fee, September 6th if they can do so.  It must include the whole ordinance, 9 pages.  The sheer length of it will give people pause. 

This will give us something to collect signatures on until the Circuit Court rules on the ballot title appeal.  From there, we will circulate two petitions until the thirty days are up and continue with the initiative.

 We need to collect 2,740 signatures in 30 days from the date the ordinance is passed.  We can file cover and signature sheets and start collecting signatures before the ballot title is complete, the time being so short.  

Seems a daunting task, but referendums tend to spread like wildfire, and if nothing else, it will stop any action on the Public Safety Utility Fee until the 30 days are up, and we should get more circulators and donations for the initiative.

 

City blocks river access with weeds

 

I have a dog named Sage who is a son of a Lab, so he likes to swim.  We usually go to the river access below the Wastewater Treatment plant, just East of where the river trail climbs to Spruce Street and drops closer to the river.  Lately we have been unable to go down there because the city has not cut its weeds sufficiently to be safe for dogs and people. 

This year, the city cut the cheat grass, foxtails and star thistle only a few feet off the paved river trail and cut the foxtails narrowly on the branched paths to the river to a height that would put seeds into shoes and socks.  Sage rolled in the cut foxtails above these two trails last week and got seeds into his harness and fur that I had to remove.   A star thistle is head high on me, right below the fork in the path upstream.   Tall cheat grass bow gracefully over said path, dangling their sticker seeds and blocking it.

            This is a place along the river where people could, until this summer, safely take kids and dogs to wade.  Fisherman used the concrete block and the shingle along the shore to fish.  The current is out about 20 feet and the water is shallow and calm upstream and downstream of the fishing block, protected by rocky bars upstream and the block.

 The next river access downstream has strong current very close to the bank and is not as suitable for swimming.  Sage got swept downstream and thereafter waded close to the bank.  The sticker grasses are not so bad, but it is not a good place for kids or dogs. 

The City has cut off river access to the public with poor weed control, including blackberries along the banks.  Cheat grass is head-high along the river trail above the blackberry banks, tall, yellow and screaming “Fire hazard!” for those with eyes to see.

I know that the city kills noxious sticker weeds in some places, because I looked at weeds West of the pedestrian bridge to the end of the park, which are at least soft and pretty and have no sticker seeds above the river trail, and few below it in the rough.  Blackberries above the trail appear to be cut frequently, having no flowers or old canes.

Please get rid of noxious weeds on city property instead of breeding them!  Reopen our river access and get serious about killing noxious weeds on all city property. 

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 7-6-2022

 published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook.

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

We can fix our water and sewer rates!

 

We can fix our water and sewer rates!

Water should never be rationed by price.  Every household should be able to afford to water their yard, protecting their city from fire, as it was before water-rationing rates.  Every household should pay the same charge for sewer within their water service size class, as it was before water-rationing sewer rates. 

·        No unit rates on sewer; minimal unit rates on water.

·        All water overhead paid through monthly base rates to pay monthly utility expenses.

·        Water unit costs covered by a single unit price.

·        All sewer costs equally shared through base rates, no extra charges.

·        Rates to rise by inflation of actual utility costs, not the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

·        No franchise fees.  The City cannot charge a franchise fee for a business it owns.

 

We can do this by putting a city initiative on the ballot, creating a Ratepayer Utility Rate Board for Grants Pass, passing it, and electing its members after it passes.

·        Rates will be set by an elected 5-member Ratepayer Utility Rate Board (Ratepayer Board)

·        Ratepayer Board eligibility is open to any registered voter living in a residence that uses Grants Pass water and/or sewer and who does not work for the city in any other capacity. 

·        Each member of the Ratepayer Board shall take an oath to stick to the above financial principles in setting utility rates. 

·        Each meeting of the Ratepayer Board will begin with a statement of these principles.

·        The Ratepayer Board will meet 5 business days within one week per year to set the rates and shall be compensated $100 per day for their attendance.

·        The City Manager shall provide each member of the Ratepayer Board with the previous year’s expenses of the water and sewer systems, including the Ratepayer Board’s per diem, one week before Ratepayer Board meetings begin.

 

Before we can do any of this, we need: a group to help write the petition; people to circulate the petition for the ballot; and people willing to serve on the Ratepayer Board.  All of this will be quicker and easier with money, so please donate.  We could use a website, too.  All of this must come together before we can even start to circulate a petition.  Fortunately, we get 2 years after the petition is approved to circulate to finish.  Let us know if you are interested in helping.

           541-955-9040                                        rycke@gardener.com

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Rationing rates have relatively low base rates and high unit rates, designed to cause less use of a product or service.  They give us cheap access to water and sewer service and make us pay through the nose to use it.  Worse yet, as use keeps dropping, rates are hiked by more than inflation every year to cover overhead in a very high-overhead business.   Overhead is the cost of the whole water or sewer system, bills that must be paid monthly regardless of use: debt payments; salaries; maintenance budgets; electricity for lights and computers.  Unit costs rise and fall with use of the utility, like water-cleaning supplies and power for pumping.  (Sewer will have no unit price.)

 

Grants Pass has had water-rationing rates since the 1990s but got serious about it in 2006 with much higher tiered unit rates and a lower base rate.  Water use dropped a lot. In 2008, City staff told the Council that their conservation rates had worked so well that the water plant could not pay the overhead.  Staff asked the council to raise the base rate by $3, which they said would stabilize revenues.  Council passed the base rate raise but it didn’t stabilize revenues because the unit rates were too high; the base rate was too low; so people kept cutting back on use.  After that, Grants Pass raised base and unit rates by the same percentage yearly to pay the overhead, until the City Council dedicated $3 million in America Rescue Act money to the new water plant and cancelled the last 2 yearly raises in rates for the new plant to compensate ratepayers.  But they are still raising rates by the CPI and will likely raise them to cover overhead every year.

The city started rationing rates on sewer in 2013, basing sewer units on the average of each winter month’s water use.  Sewer unit rates are especially bad for ratepayers and the sewer system because unit costs of cleaning sewage are much higher than for water.  They are particularly hard on the poor who must live many to a house and put a lot of water down the sewer.  When people cut back on water use by reducing what goes down their drains, they cut the water needed to make sewage flow smoothly.  Since sewage unit rates began, we have had sewage pumps clogging.  This is why we didn’t charge for sewer units before, and Medford and Portland still don’t.

 

When revenues don’t meet overhead expenses, maintenance is the easiest expense to cut.  Grants Pass never budgets what is recommended for replacement of pipes.  We had rationing rates for at least 20 years before we were told that our 80-year-old water plant is falling apart and we need a new one.  Electricity and natural gas utilities started rationing utility rates in the ‘70s, which is why we have had forest fires and gas leaks started by poor maintenance of power and gas lines.

 

Water-rationing rates have spread to cities around the world, making weather more variable and temperatures more extreme worldwide, causing bigger fires closer to cities, sometimes burning right through them, due to lower humidity from much less irrigation.  It’s time to start the Great Ratepayers Revolt by taking control of our city utility rates.

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

Join Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

Give Fire Safety Enforcement to Firefighters

 

            Before 2006, we had firemen going around town in May, telling people to cut their grass for fire season.  We also called the Fire Department to complain about uncut properties.  City Manager David Frasher and the Council joined fire and police into “Public Safety” and stopped them from enforcing city codes.  They gave that job to Code Enforcement, soon called “Community Service,” and they enforced codes thereafter only from citizen complaints.

          Manager Frasher taught Community Service not to enforce property maintenance codes until the nuisance was so bad that the city could abate it, at 10% over cost.  He was hired by a Council of mostly builders and bankers.

Over two elections, voters elected other small business owners, who fired Frasher.  Those five councilors were soon recalled by city staff and their friends, egged on by Mayor Murphy, who then appointed 5 Councilors on his own non-existent authority. 

That Council or the next hired Manager Cubic.  When I complained that the 10% abatement fee rewarded the City for not enforcing codes sooner and was a conflict of interest, he raised the fee to 20% and continued to harvest health and safety hazards as they got ripe.

          This year, the City left two Community Service Officer positions unfilled to help balance the budget, so there aren’t enough CSOs to investigate all complaints.  Noxious grasses and weeds, mostly with burrs and stickers, have taken over dry lawns and other neglected areas and too many have not been cut as fire season begins. Manager Cubic said on KAJO the other day that Council sets the level of service, and we don’t have enough police to police properties.

          Does this Council want to save our city from wildfire and make this city more inviting?  Now that we have again separated fire and police services, you need to give active enforcement of property nuisance codes back to the fire department.  They have a strong incentive to do a good job at it, and they have enough time between fighting fires, which is why they used to do it in the first place.

          But to help people maintain their properties fire safe, we need to return our water rates to the rate system that for 50 years allowed everyone to fully water their yards: paying all overhead with base rates and only marginal unit costs with unit prices.  Then we can all grow good green perennial lawns, flowers, food, and shrubs, rather than noxious fire-hazard brambles, grasses and weeds, full of stickers and burrs.

             (Correction:  The Courier called me and said that Manager Cubic was consistent in saying that Police and Fire were joined in Public Safety in 1986.  Police and Fire were forbidden to enforce city code around 2006 and Code Enforcement/Community Service were given the job.)

 

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 6-1-22 and the Josephine County Commissioners 6-15-22

 published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

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

Cities need to stay hydrated

 

            For National Drinking Water Week, our Public Works Director tells us on the City website, “Our bodies are made up of mostly water and we need to stay hydrated to stay healthy and function properly.”   The same can be said for other living things in our cities that thrive on sprinklers, life that is impoverished and dying where properties dry out over the summer, due to high unit rates imposed by our cities on our water use.  

            Water is the wealth of any ecosystem.  Watering stores water in surface soil and plants, to guard against fire.  Our animals, plants, and soils “need to stay hydrated to stay healthy and function properly.”   

            Like money, water must circulate to be abundant.  Drought is a water depression, not enough water in the air to make rain.  Sprinklers are efficient rain makers.  Half of the water they throw evaporates, which condensed into thunderheads in 1985 in Grants Pass and made nice, wet thunderstorms nearly every weekend, the first summer I lived here.  

            In 1986, we were told that we were in drought, and “Don’t water your lawns or wash your cars.”  That summer, we went 103 days without rain.  Rationing water in a drought doesn’t help it; it makes it worse, by cutting a major source of evaporation, watering of lawns and transpiration from watered plants. 

Rationing water by price has made drought chronic, because watering is the biggest and easiest use of water to cut—and the most destructive to residents’ morale and real estate.  Dry lawns die; some trees and shrubs die with no irrigation.  Residents and landlords stop looking at their yards because they are ugly.  They feel bad because they are too poor to water their property.  They feel even worse when their neighborhood burns because of uncut weeds and little or no soil moisture.

Building water plants and watering our cities with cheap, clean water, paying our water system’s monthly bills with only base rates, made our weather increasingly moister and more moderate over fifty-plus years, and kept the price of using water low, so cheap we thought of it as free, so we could use it for any beneficial use.  We need to return to pricing our water to sell it, not to ration it.  

Clean water is not just for drinking and household use.   The first man the Lord God made was a gardener, the first woman, his helper.  Gardening, which includes lawns, is perhaps water’s highest and best use.  It reaches to the heavens and makes rain.

                       

 

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 4-20-2022 and the Josephine County Commissioners 4-27-22

 published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

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

News brief: Antarctic 70 and Arctic 50 degrees above normal

 FILE - A drop of water falls off an iceberg melting in the Nuup Kangerlua Fjord near Nuuk in southwestern Greenland, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017. Earth’s poles are undergoing simultaneous freakish extreme heat with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) warmer than average and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) warmer than average. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

News Brief, Daily Courier, March 20, 2022

 “Antarctic 70 and Arctic 50 degrees above normal”

 “Earth’s poles are undergoing freakish extreme heat, with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees warmer than average, and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees above average.  Weather stations in Antarctica shattered records Friday as the region neared autumn.  The two-mile high Concordia station was at 10 degrees, which is about 70 degrees warmer than average, while the even higher Vostok station hit a shade above 0 degrees, beating the all-time record by 27 degrees, according to a tweet from extreme weather tracker Maximiliano Herrara.  It caught officials at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, by surprise said Center ice scientist Walt Meier.  ‘They are opposite seasons.  You don’t see the north and south poles both melting at the same time.  It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.’”

 “What the heck!” I said to my daughters.  I assumed the temperatures were Fahrenheit, since they didn’t say otherwise and this is the US. “Both temperatures are below freezing.  Nothing is melting!”  I looked up the stations to see which is Arctic and which is Antarctic.  They were both Antarctic.  We ended up deciding that they must be using Celsius.  But that would make a 70 degree difference a lot more intense: 158 degrees F, which it could not be. 

 Nowhere was any particular place in the Arctic mentioned.  I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska in the early ‘70s when we had a 73-degree rise in 24 hours, from -40 degrees F to 33 above.  Icicles were melting, and people were running around in boots and shorts.  I also saw a fall and winter, 1976-77, there when we had rain on Halloween and Thanksgiving, and we didn’t get snow that stuck until March.  (Interestingly, -40 is the same temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius.)

 I looked up the headline of this brief and found many copies of the full article by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press.  Almost all included both Fahrenheit and Celsius, though Fahrenheit was not labeled, until I came to the LA Times, which only gave Fahrenheit and yet did not label it.  Otherwise, the article was the same as the other Borenstein articles.  It appears to be the source for the Courier’s brief, which was edited a tad too brief to be accurate.   https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-19/antarctica-and-arctic-70-and-50-degrees-above-normal  

 This article from U.S News is representative of most of the articles I perused: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-03-18/hot-poles-antarctica-arctic-70-and-50-degrees-above-normal. These show that temperatures in the Courier brief are indeed Fahrenheit.  All but the Courier’s brief included the single Antarctic station, Terra Nova, that is on the coast and was 14 degrees above freezing.  It is located on an inlet near the Ross Ice Shelf (a fact that I had to look up) which has been slowly melting and breaking up for decades.

 None of them included any particular place or temperature in the Arctic in the article itself, except to mention Greenland at the end, only half of which is within the Arctic Circle and which is brushed by the Gulf Stream, which Borenstein mentioned did not name.  Most of them also include a photo of dripping ice, from an iceberg in a Nuup Kangerlua Fjord near Nuuk, well outside of the Arctic Circle, about the same latitude as Iceland.

 I object strongly to statements by two weather scientists.  National Snow and Ice Data Center ice scientist Walt Meier said, “They are opposite seasons.  You don’t see the north and south poles both melting at the same time.  It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.” 

Spring and fall are not opposite except in time.  They begin 6 months apart, but their weather is much the same, though reversed in time.  Winter and summer have opposite temperatures, outside equatorial zones.  Both places where melting was reported in March were on coasts, one just inside and one outside the Arctic Circle.   

 University of Wisconsin meteorologist Matthew Lazzara said, regarding East Antarctica’s Dome C-ii, that logged 14 degrees (-10 degrees Celsius) Friday, where the normal is -45 degrees (-43 degrees Celsius): “That’s a temperature that you should see in January, not March. January is summer there. That’s dramatic.”

 January below the tropics is early summer and is cooler than March, late summer, after heating up for two months, just like July is cooler than September above the tropics.  Interestingly, March is also warmer than January in winter in Northern temperate zones.  If there is any month that places near the Arctic and Antarctic Circles latitudes would have melting at the same time, it’s March.  There probably is also a temperature inversion in high Antarctic mountains that makes it warmer above the inversion than below in the interior in winter, created by ice fog that settles in the valleys, as it did in Fairbanks when I lived there, which explains the record highs, though no melting, in the high mountains of Antarctica.

Saving our peach crop with mist

Grants Pass used to have a hard freeze problem mainly with apricots, which are the first fruit trees to bloom.  Our landscape management teacher told us to avoid growing apricots because we’d never get a crop here.   This year, it was peaches that were in danger of freezing their flowers off.

All this week, weather reports have shown a hard freeze coming Sunday morning after Saturday rain.  I have long seen on TV news how Florida orange growers deal with hard freezes, turning on sprinklers overnight to keep their flowers and fruit from freezing.  I decided to put my large mister made of PVC pipes, standing 6 feet tall with nine emitters on the pole, in the middle of my peach tree, which was in full bloom by Saturday, and turn it on overnight.   

People in my house were skeptical and thought of this as an experiment.  I knew it would work.  If it works in Florida, it will work anywhere, and it worked Sunday in my yard.

In 2000, our teacher told us that when liquid water turns to ice, it loses a lot of heat to its surroundings to make that phase change, just as water sucks in heat, cooling its surroundings, to make the phase change from liquid to vapor, something that can only happen over 41 degrees F.  Likewise, melting ice sucks heat and cools its surroundings when it changes to liquid, which we take advantage of to make homemade ice cream, salting the ice to melt the ice faster and freeze the ice cream mix as we stir it.  Ice is also highly insulative, so once the flowers were covered with ice, they didn’t freeze.

Every flower on that tree was still perfect.  Interestingly, I found that the mist spread a very long ways during the night.  I’d left a broom and standing dustpan about 50 feet north of the tree, leaning on a tent shed.  It was not only icy before the frost started to melt, it also had liquid water in the dustpan before the frost melted.

It was a freezing morning and it built up more ice as I took photos and then left the mister running when I went to play cribbage with a friend.  When I returned about an hour later, it was turned off and all the ice had melted.  The flowers look just like they did the day before.  The mister will stay in that tree until the danger of hard freezes passes.

 Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

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