Sewage units are unjust and unfair

 

           Sewage cannot be measured directly, so Grants Pass charges us by the unit by taking the average of 5 months of fall, winter, and spring water use, to charge us through the year, on the specious grounds that everyone should pay for every unit of water that carries waste to the sewage plant.  Everyone did before, by spreading the cost equitably, by the size of the sewage pipe.

          

            Worse, we are triple charged for our use of water that carries sewage. Household use of the sewage system is charged double the price of the water cleaned and sent to our homes.  Sewage is harder to clean than river water, but it didn’t matter before. The sewage plant was paid only by base rates, until our present City Manager got a previous Council to pass charging unit rates on sewage.                  

            Businesses are charged sewage rates for all the water they use year-round!  Charging businesses for doing business is hiking prices and forcing merchants to be stingy with their facilities.  All the money that is going to units these days by putting part of overhead into water and sewer unit rates is pushing up the price of both services far higher than inflation.

We used to have beautiful, green yards, and businesses had well-kept properties with planting spaces that were gardened.  Now we have many dry yards and businesses letting their weeds grow.

Not only that, but the amount of household water going down the drain depends a lot on how many people are living in the house.  Poor households generally have many people in a house, while the rich tend to live one or two to a house, so the poor are subsidizing sewage for the rich and upper middle class.

Sewer plants were built to provide hygiene and keep our river clean.  Now we are told, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.”  It doesn’t mellow; it just stinks and provides less water to carry the waste.  No wonder pumps are clogging.

This Council is different, one of the best we’ve had, after a rough start.  You can stop this wastage of money and the ignorance of going backward on health and hygiene by returning the sewage system to base rates only.

 

          9-16-2026, 3-minute speech to the Grants Pass City Council published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com. 

To be posted on Facebook, Nextdoor and X.com

 

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