The Natural Gardener: Price Water and Sewer Fairly

It doesn’t take a rate consultant to create fair water and sewer rate systems.  Generally accepted accounting principles would take all the fixed “overhead” costs and pay for them through the base rate, and pay for the unit costs, which vary with the amount of clean water produced and delivered, in the unit price.  This pays for the cost of providing clean water in the base rate, pays for unit costs in the unit price, and keeps the finances of the plant stable.

It takes a rate consultant, using arcane formulas, to assign overhead costs to particular customer classes’ unit rates and thus give governments, businesses, apartment dwellers and smaller households lower rates than larger families in single family homes, who are often poorer people sharing increasingly high housing costs.

When I lived here in the ‘80s, we paid $25 per month for water and sewer. The city was clean, green, and beautiful. When I moved back here in 1999 and bought a house for me and my two children, I paid between about $50 in the winter and $75 in the summer.  The difference was that the water base rate was $13 lower and unit costs were charged.  This city was drier and dustier than before.

In 2005-2006, the City hired a rate consultant to devise a water rate system that saved water, though the city had no need to do so, with large water right and a dam to keep our river running.  They lowered the base by $4 and started a three-tiered unit rate system, with higher marginal unit prices only on single family homes: not on governments; businesses; apartments; or PUDs.  My water bill more than doubled, bringing the combined bill to $140 in midsummer. 

A lot of people quit watering.  Within two years, the City had to raise the base rate $3 to pay the overhead.  It has continued to increase it since; it is now at $17.70, more than double the 2006 base rate, as more people stopped watering due to high unit prices.  My combined bill has risen to $183.

A few years ago, the City decided that people should pay for their sewer use based on winter water use, so that they would pay for every unit of wastewater cleaned.  My sewer bill doubled, from $20 to $40, as the base rate was cut and unit costs were charged.  They are now rebuilding parts of the wastewater treatment plant and raised wastewater rates 7% on both the base and the unit price per year for four years starting last February and 7% more each year for the next three.  My sewer bill is now over $70, as we had 7 people in our house last winter, up from 3.

Now the City plans a new water treatment plant.  Their rate consultant literally doubled down on tiered rates and high unit prices.  They will be voting to raise water rates soon.

State law requires that fees for government services be no higher than the cost of providing that service to each customer separately, not collectively.  Base rates for water and sewer that don’t cover the cost of overhead and corresponding high unit rates make larger households pay more per unit for water and sewer than smaller households and destabilize the finances of our water and sewer plants.  Ask the City Council to put all of our overhead in the bases, and only unit costs in the unit prices, to keep the utilities’ bills paid and the residents able to afford to use all the water we need.

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

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