Some People Can’t See the Good

 

         

Dear Editor,

             The Daily Courier published an article 11-17-2021, “IV Water District makes plea for state help," regarding the problems caused by illegal pot growing operations disguised as hemp farms.  One of the complaints in the article is that some of these farms are buying bulk water from Cave Junction's station.  Some people just don't know a good thing when they see it.

            City bulk water is legal to buy for all uses.  Cave Junction’s bulk rates are $30/1000 gallons.  Ratepayers of Cave Junction pay a top-tier rate of $2.05/100 cubic feet, or $2.74/1000g, for water delivered to their taps by pipelines. 

Everyone who buys bulk water at $30/1000g is paying some of the overhead that city ratepayers are not paying as they cut back on irrigation and other water use to pay high unit rates.  Bulk water users keep ratepayers’ unit and base rates from climbing still higher to pay the overhead, the monthly cost of having a water system, as they keep cutting back on use. 

This is what modern city rate systems do, rationing water by price, with a base rate too low to cover the overhead and high unit rates to discourage use.  But the City thereby depends on high unit rates to cover the overhead, which leaves it always chasing the overhead.  

Businesses can’t survive this way.  But water and sewer plants can; they are natural monopolies.  But they don’t have to; the Council could set base rates to cover all overhead and stop rationing water by rates.

 

Sincerely,

 

Rycke Brown

Birds Love a Fountain

 

            We bought a bird house about twenty years ago, which occasionally was used by birds over the years, but not every year.  This year, my daughter’s mate used cedar fence boards to make sills for our new windows.  He had pieces of scrap that he built a new style of birdhouse with and hung 3 of them along the east wall of our house this spring as sparrows mobbed to mate.   All the boxes were quickly taken.

            A couple years before, we built a chicken run around 3 sides of our toolshed with nest boxes in the east wall of the shed, shaded and sheltered by our neighbor’s tall timber bamboo, and put perches outside under the bamboo and a large south overhang.  Hens are well-insulated birds; they do fine outside in winter here.  That winter, I started feeding them cooked brown rice and meat along with kitchen scraps, grains, greens and mulch for growing worms.  Sparrows found the soft rice very much to their liking as well.

            This summer, I traded $300 worth of gardening labor for a wonderful heavy fountain that had not been filled for years.  We put it in my front yard near a sweet gum and a witch hazel full of evergreen China Blue vine, out front of our picture window.  Having to top off the fountain every day helps me remember to water my potted plants and pull weeds out front. 

The sparrows love the fountain.  Other birds also visit: hummingbirds; chickadees; a flock of quick, tiny birds; and a jay.   We have watched the smaller birds eating pests off our garden plants.  Recently, we added a hummingbird feeder outside our dining room window which is being well used.

The "quick, tiny birds" were Ruby-Crowned Kinglets. I finally got a good look at one and found its name by searching "tiny gray birds with red spot on head."

Having water, food, and bird houses and a huge twisty willow tree in our yard has filled our yard with birds.  This fall, our sparrows and hummingbirds raised an extra set of young in October because they had everything they need.  A hummingbird was recently singing his territory.

We have cats outdoors.  They haven’t made a dent in the bird population.  What has been depleting the number of birds, bees, and bugs in our city and our world is lack of water.  We rarely see or hear mosquitoes in Grants Pass anymore.  Because of water-rationing rates, we haven’t been watering our yards or our birds like we used to during the 50 years when water was so cheap to use, we thought of it as free.

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 11-17-2021, shared with the Josephine County Commissioners,

 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

Tokay Heights has a dump in the middle--Open email

To: the Josephine County Board of Commissioners 

     Grants Pass City Council, Mayor and City Manager

Honorable Public Servants,

As I walked the NE ward of Grants Pass in late October, placing water rate reform leaflets at doors of residences along NE Tokay Heights, I came upon a residential dump.  

This is not just some random abandoned property, trashed by those who seek shelter on it; it appears to be a business dump for the owner of 701 NE Tokay Heights, General Property Group LLC.  It is .99 acre of garbage and wood trash left in dump-truck-size piles and mixed into the dirt.  Two little houses on that property are falling apart among the trash piles.

It is along a stretch of gravel road between the two paved and developed ends of NE Tokay Heights.  At the Northwest end of that gravel, at the top of NE Elida, there are no signs regarding trespassing.  At the Southwest end, at the top of NE A Street and just below other residences on Tokay Heights, there is a no trespassing/private property sign.  But one does not have to trespass to see it is a dump from either end.  

It exists in a heart-shaped two-property cutout on that edge of the city, outside the city limits.  The owner of the neighboring cut-out property tries to keep trespassers off it when he sees them.

Sincerely yours,

Rycke

A pond drains my yard; a willow shades it

 

            We moved to Grants Pass in 1999 and bought a house on Bridge Street in October.  The first winter, our backyard flooded with water.  In the lowest point of our backyard, I dug a small pond to capture the water and pump it out to the street.  I eventually lined it with rubber and then rocks and made a watercourse and fall on the mound of dirt from the pond, lined and covered with rock.  I put a pump in the pond and laid irrigation line to send excess water to the street and added a line to the top of the watercourse, so I could flip switches to change it from pumping out, to recirculating, and back.

          The next spring, I stuck a twisty willow twig in the ground on the other side of the mound.  It grew fast and well, to about fifty feet tall and wide in about ten years.  Its girth is now one hundred eleven inches at three feet.  For a twisty willow, it is very strong and has not lost major branches in snowstorms like some have. 

The shade from that tree covers most of our backyard near the house after one o’clock PM and allows my grandkids to play on a little swing set and swim in an above-ground pool on hot days. It is vital to our use of our backyard.

          Two years ago, I wanted to redo the pond liner and we took the rocks and liner out and reshaped it a bit.  Last winter, it refilled and stayed filled, despite the dry spring.  I decided that twenty years of water in it had compacted the soil sufficiently to leave out the liner and just replace the rocks. 

This summer, the ground within six feet of the pond on the opposite side from the willow stayed moist but still firm underfoot, and our roses within that damp zone were happier than they had ever been.  The willow apparently sucked water only from the soil and the pond on its side.  It had no die-back and dropped far fewer twigs and leaves over this summer.

On the other hand, this magnificent tree has become expensive over the years and especially this year as it sucks as much water as it needs, because of the high and rapidly rising price of city water by the unit. 

This is another reason why we should not conserve water by rationing through high unit rates.

 

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 11-4-2021, shared with the Josephine County Commissioners,

 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