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   

It’s the climate

             This morning I woke up, looked out the window, and the sky was bright red and orange.  Jesus said that this sign of the weather meant that there would be rain.  But in recent decades, this weather sign cannot be dependable; it is more likely smoke from wildfires. 

          When I first came here in 1985, we were greeted with a banner on sixth and seventh streets: “It’s the climate.”  The same sign greeted me in 1999 when I came home from Arizona.  But as two decades of dryness, heat and growing wildfire passed, the banners became a joke and disappeared.  The climate is not so nice anymore.

          It was not so nice when Grants Pass burned in 1905 or 1906, and the town was rebuilt with bricks.  My son-in-law has been working for a man who is building fire-proof houses in the counties for rich people, while other builders use wood.  Their customers can’t get insured against fire in the counties, but with a fire-proof house, they won’t need fire coverage.

          The burning of Grants Pass was the reason that we built a water plant and distribution system, so every house and business would be able to keep their property fire-safe with green plants and wet ground.  The price of using water was kept as low as possible by separating “the overhead,” infrastructure and other expenses that were slow to change, from the “unit cost,” which varies greatly with seasonal irrigation added to household use. 

Every city in the country was doing the same thing: selling water cheap or even free to keep their city from burning. 

Overhead is 99% of the cost of utilities, while their product is 1%.  The base rate for water and sewer varies upward with the size of the pipes, so bills can be paid, monthly or bi-monthly. Water unit costs were a single unit rate for everyone.  Sewage was all base rate, because sewage cannot be directly measured.

It was an exceedingly fair and affordable system.  What we have now is unfair and unaffordable for the majority.  You can bring the old system back.

           

          8-19-2026, 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

Fires in and near cities

 

Saturday afternoon, we had fire climbing up Beacon Hill. One house burned.  It stopped at the first ridge top, thanks to the work of our firefighters.  On Sunday, six hundred homes and structures burned in Spokane.  MSN wrote, “The fires exploded in size over the weekend amid strong winds, hot temperatures and critically dry conditions.” 

          “Strong winds and hot temperatures” are caused by “critically dry conditions.” Fires like these have been far too common in recent decades.  Up to the mid-80’s, fires didn’t start anywhere near cities, because cities were being watered by sprinklers every weekend of the growing season. 

We are told, “Sprinklers evaporate half of what they throw before it reaches the ground.”  I heard that in Landscape Management class in 2001, and it is true in most cases.  Air also evaporates any water that doesn’t soak into the ground, plants, fences, sidewalks and streets.  

This does not waste water; it is used for beneficial purposes. It cools the area being watered.  Water vapor rises up to cloud level and makes clouds and rain.  It spreads sideways as well, humidifying the area around cities, farms, and gardens.  With every city, farm and resident watering with sprinklers, every city was protected from wildfires, which happened only way out in the wilderness. 

In 1985, we had thunderstorms nearly every weekend of that summer. The exceptions were when many people didn’t water because they thought it would rain. 

On the other hand, in 1986, we were told before it happened that we were heading into drought so, “Don’t water your lawn or wash your cars.”  That summer, we had 103 days without rain.  If we had been watering as usual, we would have had rain regardless. 

We never heard of dry lightning storms causing fires near cities in Oregon in those days.  We didn’t hear about cities being torched by firebugs.  Gravity winds were mild or non-existent.  I remember one such wind event in Tillamook, Oregon in midwinter.  We had a foot of snowpack that melted away overnight, causing flooding in the flat land.

 

8-19-2026, 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                  541-955-9040          rycke@gardener.com

A massive Willow still grows

 

The thicker the plants grow, the more they grow and the safer from fire you are.  Clover is the best ground cover, being a perennial that shares space well with other plants.

          A massive twisty willow still grows next to my pond.  With the hotter weather, it is sucking more water.  I have to keep a hose trickling into the pond, after I play catch-up by opening the valve fully first thing in the morning.  The rest of my yard is being watered by impact sprinklers as needed and misters running in the heat of the afternoon and through the night, when it spreads further. Our backyard is well watered; our front yard has not been watered enough and has to be supplemented. 

My daughter’s family of four lives with me.  I pay the mortgage; she pays the utilities and the escrow.  This month, she began getting worried about paying the “city services” bill, as our utility bill is now called.  She thinks we should cut back on water but can’t think of what to cut.  A watered yard with misters is cooler and safer than an unwatered yard.  We do a lot of laundry as well. We wash dishes once a day. 

People shouldn’t have to cut back on water’s comfort, safety and hygiene to pay the water and sewer bill. Nor should any other city service be on our utility bill. The only reason they are on it is so the city can charge whatever it takes to pay the utilities’ overhead, police and fire fighters, streets and sidewalks while avoiding votes on what used to be called taxes, not “fees.”

We, the people, are tired of this whole package of lies.  We are tired of poor and middle classes being unable to use all the water and sewer we need, while the upper classes just pay the bills and use all they want.  Our water and sewer plants belong to all citizens, not our administrators. 

We are angry about unequal pricing of water units and sewer being tied to our winter water use.  Sewer needs to go back to all base rates. We need equal unit pricing of real unit costs, not tiered rates if we own a single-family home or fees for living uphill or across the river.

We used to have a city where lower classes’ yards were not so easily distinguished from upper classes.  Our city was beautiful in the eighties.  We fear the day that our city burns for lack of irrigation.  My house will not burn.

 

7-15-26, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook.

To be posted on Facebook, Nextdoor and X.com

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

The best fire insurance is a green yard plus misters

 

The thicker the plants, the more they grow and the safer from fire you are.  Clover is a great base ground cover, but in my yard, only sticker and burr plants are weeded out.

 At our last meeting, a councilor asked me how I liked my water bill.  I said it’s good.  But that answer was incomplete.  I like using our water for any beneficial use, but I don’t like the cost our City and most other cities place on such use.

The best insurance against wildfire is a green yard, and that doesn’t mean plastic grass.  When Paradise burned, the McDonalds burned, but their sign, surrounded by real green grass, did not burn.  In Santa Rosa, huge subdivisions burned for lack of defensible space, but the young trees and grass across the sidewalk did not. 

Just outside Grants Pass about a decade ago, a large pine tree burned in an unwatered yard.  Their vehicle also burned, followed by the neighbor’s fence.  But that is where it stopped, as the adjacent yard had six-inch tall fescue, which stopped the flames from reaching the neighbor's house. 

Fine fescue goes dormant for lack of water readily and cannot be revived until fall.  Tall fescue grows roots eighteen inches deep. When not watered, it slowly loses outer leaves until only the innermost leaves survive.  It does not go dormant.

Water is the death of fire.  Any plant with water flowing through it is safe from wildfire, particularly with other watered plants around it.  Misters are surprisingly cheap to use, even at our present high unit rates, which are made to make poor and lower middle class people not use as much water as they need, while wealthier or more determined gardeners use what they need regardless of price.  Rock doesn’t stop a gravity-wind-driven fire.  Blowing embers cross everything except watered plants, sprinkler water and mister vapor.

Everyone should be able to water their yards, at a price that pays for the true unit cost of cleaned water.   Normal cost accounting for utilities puts all their infrastructure, employees, and office costs in base rates to pay overhead, costs that are steady over the months of the year, while unit costs (about 1% of utility costs) rise and fall with production.  Sewer is base rate only because its volume cannot be directly measured.

 

3-minute speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 7-1-26

published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

Posted on Facebook, Nextdoor and X.com

 

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

Eight beavers solved a flooding problem in the London Tube

 

Courtesy of elli60, free photo

Since the nineteen seventies, there had been a problem with flooding in the London Tube in the Ealing area and the neighborhoods around it.  Nothing the City did worked to stop it.  But in 2023, the city introduced five beavers to Paradise Fields, which this year had eight beavers.  There was no flooding problem in the Tube or the neighborhoods this year even though there were torrential rains.  The dams and wetlands the beavers created held the water.

We have had occasional flooding in the Southwest part of our city on the South side of the Rogue River.  Public Works Director Jason Canady told me that they are staying on top of it, but he is intrigued with the idea.

It might take longer than in London; we might have to buy land near the Redwood Highway or Redwood Avenue and plant a lot of fast-growing willows, poplars and big-leaf maples.  But our river will be cleaner once the dams are built and the chances of flooding will be greatly reduced.  We don’t even need to go far for beavers, as they live in our river and make their homes in its banks.

2-minute speech to Grants Pass City Council, 6/17/26

 published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

Posted on Facebook, Nextdoor and X.com

 

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

Apologies for the center alingment; Blogger gets stubborn about correcting it.

A Massive Willow Grows in My Yard

 

        

In the spring of 1999, I came back to Grants Pass and bought a house for my family. Our first winter, my yard was flooded, so I picked the lowest spot and started digging a small pond when the yard dried up and set up drainage to the street.  I picked a twig off of a huge twisty willow down the street and planted it right away near the pond.  Twenty-six years later, it is as massive as the tree it came from.  It is about fifty feet tall and wide, and five feet in diameter, at five feet.

The unit price of water has been hiked every year since 2005.  Sometime in the next decade, our City Manager decided that sewage needed unit prices, saying, “It’s only fair that everyone pays for every gallon of water that goes to the sewage plant.” 

It is not possible to meter sewage.  Since people don’t water in the winter, the average winter water use per household would be our sewage usage for the year.  It didn’t take long for winter to be expanded to five months, from mid-November through mid-March.

My willow tree has grown a lot in the meantime, because it takes water from my pond, and I keep it full.  This year, March was warm, and the tree leafed out earlier than normal.  March took 40 units, which made the average for the winter 21 units. 

None of that water went to the sewage plant.  Nor does the water that fills my fountain, which waters the birds.  I challenge those charges.

To be continued.

         

5/20/26, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook.

To be posted on Facebook, Nextdoor and X.com

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

Notice to an anonymous neighbor

 

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener

1415 SW Bridge Street

Grants Pass, Oregon 97526

541-955-9040

rycke@gardener.com

 

June 28, 2026

To the neighbor who zip-tied a very well-done laminated notice about what should be brought to the Bridge Street sharing shelf. 

 Your notice had several flaws.  It was anonymous and unauthorized, so I can’t address you directly, and people would think I wrote it.  Therefore, I am posting it and my reply on Nextdoor.

 I agree with most of it, but the idea that we do not welcome “sofas and large furniture” is wrong.  We never had to bring any large furniture, including mattresses, from our curb to the dump.  Some people have done it for us.  It makes them feel good to help us out.  In the last month or so, we had three separate deliveries of couches and other furniture.

 The first couch was in very good shape, apart from a bit of grime around the bottom, but someone took the center cushion, and it took 3 weeks for a nice couple to take it to the dump.  The second was a sectional couch, which was taken within a few days.  The third was another sectional couch, which went within an hour.  Free stuff goes fast.  I took in a nice, comfy chair with a little grime that fits my short legs nicely. 

 Large wooden furniture and glass-top tables tend to go quickly.  Some people take such items even when a drawer or shelves are missing, so they can fix them and sell them at their own yard sale or whatever.

What is really irritating is small trash: appliances without necessary parts; toys missing parts; torn clothes; worn out or single shoes and boots; books without covers; and obviously littering of our shelf and curb.  Dirty clothes, I take in to wash.  If stains don’t come out, I toss them in the trash. There is one person who persists in dropping plastic confetti around the shelf, apparently just to make me pick it up.  I have to pick up small stuff so as not to allow litter to build up.

 People are either orderly or disorderly in their habits.  The disorderly will always be with us, but they are a small minority.  Some people like to help maintain a good idea and should not be deprived of the opportunity.  I am grateful for everyone who helps.

Sincerely yours,

Rycke

Water is not precious; it is vital

 Grants Pass City Water Treatment Plant is 88 years old but was neglected in the first decade of water rationing by rates.  Replacing it will cost well over 100 million dollars.

         In the summer of ‘85 and before, we had thunderstorms nearly every weekend, because most people watered only on weekends.  Summer rain was clearly tied to the amount of water our sprinklers put into the air.

When drought was declared in the summers of ‘86 and ‘87, we were told to not water our lawns or wash our cars.  We had 103 days in ‘86 and 98 days in ‘87 of no rain. 

In ‘86 we started hearing about fossil fuels causing global warming and, separately, that fresh water is only two percent of the water on Earth and must be conserved. 

This was the beginning of the most widespread and destructive hoax ever conceived.  “Conserving” water has caused untold misery for millions of people and animals around the world who have lost their homes because of overpriced water rates, jacked up higher and higher to pay the overhead as more people use less and less. Water is not precious; it is vital.

Every city with a water plant controls its own water rates.  You, our Council, are responsible for the price of our water.  Break with the past thirty years and bring back the rate system that kept our city clean, green, beautiful, and safe from wildfire by putting our proposed Charter Amendment, “Utility Bills, Rate Setting, and Contingency Funds,” on our ballot.  Grants Pass voters will start the Ratepayers Revolt.

 

3-18-26, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

Posted on Facebook and X.com

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

Cities ration water by rates

The Grants Pass City Water Treatment Plant is being replaced, because of neglect in the first two decades of water rationing by rates.

 @AGPamBondi Of all our utilities, water is the most dangerous to ration by rates, but the vast majority of cities in the U.S. are doing just that, over the last 40 years. It is done by dropping the base rate and hiking unit rates by labeling much of the overhead as unit costs, ignoring normal pricing accounting.

The idea is to make people cut back on water use. Every city does this in their own way, but they all start with decreasing the base rates and increasing the cost of units. It makes cities depend on high unit prices to pay overhead, but high unit prices make people cut back on use. Cities raise the unit rates higher and higher; eventually the base rates are increased as well, creating a vicious pricing spiral that can't be stopped until we can't cut back anymore.

Electric and natural gas utilities also have rationing rates, but they at least compete with each other. Water and sewer are city monopolies. But rationing rates are bad for utilities, government, and ratepayers. They are literally a crime: wasted water running to the ocean instead of watering land first; fraudulent science; and abuse of ratepayers.

I started the Ratepayers Revolt in Grants Pass, OR with water and sewer, which has even higher rates than water, with the introduction of sewer unit rates, based on winter water use. I am currently giving 2-minute speeches on water to our City Council. They are becoming receptive to the idea of putting my proposed Charter Amendment on the ballot to bring our rate system back to the days when water was cheap to use and sewer was all base rates.

https://gardengrantspass.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-proposed-charter-amendment-utility.html

3-18-26, 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

Beware of Consultants Hired by City Managers

 

Grants Pass' water plant.  Over 35-40 years of rationing water rates, our river has never run too low for this plant to water our city.

Kudos to the Daily Courier and writer Vickie Aldous for exposing the consultant hired by our City Manager regarding pay raises for himself and other non-union staff. The consultant was asked to create mid-size raises and delivered high raises. 

This reminds me of water and sewer rate consultants FCS Group, hired in 2005 by then City Manager David Frasher.  In 2008, our Public Works Director couldn’t pay the overhead and asked the Council to raise the base rate by $3 to fix the problem.  It didn’t, because they didn’t lower unit rates, which were most of the bill. 

FCS eventually hiked our water rates every year 5.28% above inflation to pay the overhead and Councils rubber stamped it. 

In April 2020, I sent a memo to city staff about changing the rate system back to putting all overhead costs in the base rate and charging only unit costs to unit rates, the way it was when our city was clean, green, beautiful, and far from wildfires.  

FCS sent me a memo, admitting on the first page that aligning “fixed costs” (overhead) with base rates would make revenue more stable and “water usage” cost less per unit, encouraging watering in the growing season. FCS never said what is wrong with watering. 

Ninety-nine percent of the cost of any utility is overhead; usage costs are tiny in comparison and vary greatly by season.  Paying for all plant overhead with base rates pays the bills every month, even when the plant goes down, and spreads the cost most evenly among ratepayers.  Our Budget Committee can do the yearly math to set rates.

 

3-4-2026 2-minute Speech to Grants Pass City Council

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook and X.com

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook.

 

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

Making oil and natural gas providers pay for wildfires?

 

Paradise lost

There is a movement among some states to make our oil and natural gas providers pay for wildfires, when cities have dried themselves out over the last 40 years, starting in 1986.  

Cities, states, and the EPA bought into a conjoined hoax that started in ‘86: the idea that “Fresh water is a scarce and precious resource that must be conserved!” ignoring both the water cycle and normal cost accounting.

 That same year, we heard about global warming.  I think the financier started the hoax but needed proof.  He started the “scarce and precious” water scare.  What could go wrong? 

Cities overcharge their ratepayers for their use of water and undercharge them for overhead, a system designed to jack up the price of water use.  In Grants Pass, water unit rates carry 40% of overhead and increase 5.28% over inflation every year.  It’s the only way they can pay the overhead. 

Mankind has changed weather three times, and it always involves water:

 

·       killing beavers, who kept water in the land.  This caused country and cities to burn and turned most of the West into desert. 

 

·       cities built water plants to keep cities from burning, by piping water into every occupied building.  People gardened. The water was cheap to use.

 

·       sprinklers evaporate half of what they throw! This is not waste; it feeds the water cycle, making rain.  Rain returned to cities and their surroundings.  The ‘80’s was a wet decade. 

In 1986, cities began to buy into rationing water by rates. They ration clean water with high unit rates, causing many ratepayers to eliminate their greatest use of water: Property maintenance.  These people lose their best insurance against wildfire: a green, watered yard.

 

2-4-2026 2-minute Speech to Grants Pass City Council

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook, and X.com.

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook.

 

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