Misters cool yards, stop fire

 

            It is said by water “conservationists” that “sprinklers evaporate half of the water they throw,” and followed with, “Evaporation is waste.”  But the same Landscape Management teacher that told us this in 2000 when he was selling us on drip systems also told us that Grants Pass was in no danger of burning because green grass doesn’t burn.  Grass is watered with sprinklers.  There is a lot less green grass in Grants Pass now.

Evaporation is not waste; it cools, humidifies, and is the first step in the water cycle, followed by condensation and precipitation.  It can cool objects and the air down to 41 degrees F, the temperature at which water starts to evaporate.

Sprinklers are known to create a “bubble of moisture” around any property where they are used sufficiently.  An apartment complex that was threatened by the Almeda fire did not burn because the landlord knows this and keeps his properties watered with sprinklers.  Trailer parks, on the other hand, are largely pavement and/or gravel and are often not watered enough to keep a wind-driven fire from burning right through them. 

Misters evaporate nearly all of the water they emit if the mist is fine enough, and water the ground beneath them as well.  They increase humidity and cool the air as they evaporate, making it easier to breathe.  They reduce wildfire smoke by taking smoke particles to the ground.  You shouldn’t run sprinklers 24/7, but you can run misters around the clock when the weather is hot or we are being smoked by wildfires.  If every resident of a trailer park ran several standing misters when fire danger is high, it might not burn when a gravity wind blows up fires in their vicinity.

But there is more!  Misters can moisten and cool the soil to start seeds in summer when they normally would not readily sprout.  I’ve been starting clover, lettuce and collards seed and keeping them cool and moist until they grow enough root to survive.  They also can prevent transplant shock when planting in hot weather.

Most plants like more humidity than Grants Pass has ever provided in summer, even before water-rationing rates.  Misters among my blueberries on the west side of my yard keep plants all over my garden happier with more humidity and cool the air enough to keep pollen from burning when the temps are over 95 degrees, allowing corn and tomatoes to pollinate and produce.

Published 8-25-23 at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

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

Council: Cheap water bought fire safety

 

Honorable Council, Mayor and Manager,

            I was looking over the water section of your website and looked at “The Value of Water” page.  Three brochures were listed and shown: “Clean Clothes;” “Clean Drinking Water;” and “Treated Wastewater.”

            You are missing at least one brochure: “Irrigation and Fire Safety.”  But your pricing of our water does not reflect this.  Your price discrimination between customers and their uses of water has irrigation and fire suppression paying the same top tier price that single-family homeowners pay, which shows that you want to suppress these uses the most.  As Staff pointed out in 2008, irrigation uses the most water and it is most easily cut from household budgets. 

Our city is showing the result in brown, often weedy yards that could burn at a spark.  Last year’s fires have people on edge; they know that Grants Pass could burn in the next katabatic wind event like that of last September. 

Grants Pass did burn, as did many cities, before it had a water treatment plant.  It was rebuilt with brick.  I am sure that they built the water plant to allow our residents to keep their property safe with pressurized water.  They priced water as cheap as possible by the unit and paid for the overhead with base rates.  There was no competition; water service is a natural local monopoly.  The City did it so people could afford to use as much as they needed for every conceivable use.  It resulted in a clean and beautiful city in the 80’s.

Green grass does not burn.  Dry grass and weeds burn hot.   Fresh, cleaned water is not scarce or precious and should not be priced as though it is.  It is abundant and vital to our health, hygiene and fire safety and should be a cheap as possible to use.  Those big storage tanks on our hills give us the pressure to use cleaned water effectively for irrigation and fire suppression, all over the city, making our cleaned river water far superior to water delivered in ditches.

We used to have only one unit price for those who paid the base rate, and it was low, as it covered only the unit costs, those that change with the amount of water produced.  All of our overhead: plant; pipes; equipment; personnel; debt and maintenance; were paid through base rates, monthly charges for monthly bills.  You could go back to that system well before September.

 

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 6-16-2021, 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

Council: Act like Regulators

 

Honorable Council, Mayor and Manager,

            At our last meeting, I chided this Council, especially the member who wanted to nearly double our bulk water rates from $6.05/1000 gallons to $12 just to see what happens to demand.  The Council passed the increase unanimously, so you all share in that decision. 

It seems that little will happen to demand for that water, because the actual price of the water is still low compared to the cost of hauling it.  Water is, after all, not a scarce, precious resource; it is abundant and vital to families and farms in our county.  Even hauled water is a monopoly, because the cost of time and fuel exceeds any savings that might be realized by hauling water from Medford at $1.25/1000 gallons.   This explains how Cave Junction can charge $30/1000; they are just as far from us as we are from Medford.

            The Councilor who proposed this rate hike for our rural customers replied that he represents the citizens of this city.  If you truly represent and act as regulators to protect the residents of Grants Pass from the monopoly power of city utilities to run rates up to whatever the market can bear, then you would reform our water and sewer rate systems back to what we had before water rationing rates became a worldwide fad over the last 35 years. 

For over 50 years, we paid for all the overhead of our water plant, the expenses that do not rise and fall with our use of the service, in our monthly base rates.  We paid only marginal unit costs, which rise and fall with use, in our unit rates.  Sewage treatment was all base rates with no unit rates not long ago.  Unit rates for wastewater cleaning are oppressive to larger families who are often low income and multi-generational.  Overpriced water is oppressive, too.

Returning to the old rate system would pay all the expenses of our utilities at the least cost to customers every month and allow us to use all the water we want at a low price, as we did in the ‘80s and before, when our city was clean, green, and safe from fire because we put millions of gallons in the air every day of the growing season with our sprinklers and water vapor spread through the surrounding countryside for miles.

Please put utility rate reform on your agenda so we can all water our city and make it clean, green, beautiful, and safe again.

 Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 6-2-2021, 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

Newport has very interesting rates

             I have a new Facebook friend.  Her profile said that she lives in Newport, Oregon so I looked up your water and sewer rates.  These are unique in my experience in that you charge people outside the city the same as inside the city.  You have only about 10,680 people in the city, so you apparently are trying for as many customers as you can get to share the overhead.  I heard you have about 15,000 customers.  You could probably attract more if you make your minimum charges cover your overhead, lower unit rates to actual unit costs, and drop the low-income discounts.

            If Newport uses its minimum charges to cover all overhead plus unit costs within the minimums, low-income households won’t need discounts.  It isn’t base rates or monthly minimum charges that kill budgets; it’s high unit rates.  Low-income people who live many to a house can’t stay within the minimum charge or even close to it when unit rates are high.

This goes double for sewer rates, units for which are generally calculated from winter water use, which is presumed to all go down the sewer.  Three of the thirteen cities on our rate comparison chart still charge no unit rates on sewer: Portland, Oregon; Medford, Oregon; and Redding, California. 

Unit charges on sewage is a relatively new way to ration water and is particularly unfair to low-income people who live many to a house.  Your customers can’t cut the amount of waste they put down the drain, but they can cut their use of the water needed to carry their waste to the wastewater plant.  Get rid of unit rates on sewer and make water units cheap again.  The poor and middle class will be able to afford them again, and sewer pumps and pipes will be less likely to clog.  

Newport has only three water unit rates: Residential, including Single Family and Multi-Family; Commercial, which includes governments; and Single Family low income qualified, which has a 30% discount.  You have no such discount on water for Multi-Family, likely because apartment landlords pay city utilities for their residents.  Few unit rates are a good thing.  A single unit rate would be better.

Newport's unit rates are otherwise flat (no tiers) and pretty high: $4.24/1000 gallons for Residential; 4.77/1000 for Commercial; and $2.96/1000 for Single Family low income.  These are water-rationing rates, but I have yet to find a city without them.  They are remarkable in that residents have lower rates than non-residential users.

Newport doesn’t have base rates, but rather minimum charges according to service size, which are obviously not designed to cover all the overhead, at $19.61 for Single Family Residential 5/8”-3/4” and $13.73 for Single Family 5/8”-3/4” low income, which buys 4,625 gallons and 4,623 gallons respectively.  Multi-Family minimum charge starts at $37.42, which is likely what your minimum charge for 5/8”-3/4” would be if your minimums covered the overhead, as the city wants to get that covered whether an apartment is rented or not. 

            Your wastewater unit rates are also high.  They run $6.62 for Single Family and duplexes, with a minimum charge of 25.81, and $4.63/1000 for Single Family and duplexes low income, minimum $18.07.  Multi-family is $9.82/1000, minimum $29.76.  This is the same as paid by Commercial, which also has extra charges for Extra Strength waste that needs more biochemical oxygen. 

The biggest problem with water-rationing rates is that they cause rates to rise far faster than inflation.  High unit rates are designed to cut use, but low minimums or base rates depend on use to pay part of the overhead.  When they work as designed and people cut back on use to save money, rates must be raised to cover the overhead.  Raising unit rates causes lower use, so they have to be raised again, which further lowers use and rates are raised again.

This vicious pricing spiral continues until people can’t cut back any further.  Seattle may have gotten to that point with water at $15.78/1000g on their highest tier inside the city and over $18 outside it.  Everybody ends up paying more and more to use less and less water with water-rationing rates.

            In any case, high unit rates are not justified by the need to pay for water and sewer plants; they make it harder, not easier.  Their impact on household and business budgets hurts lower and middle-class households who use city water and sewer plants and every sector of our economy except water and sewer rate consultants.  They also reduce hygiene, fire safety, and the beauty and livability of our cities.

Newport may regret these rates if Oregon has another katabatic wind event like September 8, 2020 that blows wildfire right through your town.  Keeping property watered stores moisture in plants and soil and keeps deciduous trees too wet to burn.  You should be encouraging irrigation, not discouraging it.

            Coastal cities have problems with seawater infiltrating their fresh ground water.  More irrigation can fill aquifers and keep the seawater out.  Florida is probably having this problem because they are also rationing water by price and discouraging irrigation.

            I believe that Grants Pass also had minimum charges instead of base rates when I lived here for two years in the ‘80s, because I recall my utility bills being flat except in summer, when unit charges added only pennies to my bill.

 Join Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

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

Plant Red Maples, not Swamp Oaks

 

Honorable Mayor, Council and Manager,

            At the December 14th workshop, you discussed what kind of trees should be planted on the Washington Boulevard median after the declining flowering cherries are taken out.  The city’s Tree Advisory Committee was split on the matter; some wanted to continue the row of red maples, but more members wanted diversity, so the group recommended white swamp oak. 

A couple of councilors who live on that street objected to the committee’s choice of oaks.  Oaks drop acorns; squirrels love them; squirrels are destructive; and they already have a squirrel problem. 

Diversity is overrated in city street trees.  Continuing that nice line of red maple would lend consistency to the median and make a beautiful show in the fall, even if they will be smaller than the current trees for some time to come.  Red maples grow faster than oaks, particularly when young, and should catch up to the other red maples as the older trees mature.

I love red maple leaves: I raked up a truck load last fall from around one large, lone tree in that median for mulch.  Red maple leaves resist rot as well as oak, keeping soil covered through the summer.  The leaves I gathered were still in perfect condition, not sticking together as I spread them in my garden yesterday, although they were wet in the bags for two months.  Their leaves don’t blow around like oak leaves do, being flat.

Oaks should not be planted near pavements.  Round acorns are a hazard to cyclists, turn ankles and make a mess in the road when run over.  Crows drop acorns and walnuts on pavements just to get them run over so they can eat nut meat. 

Swamp oaks drop their leaves in the spring, and their dead leaves hang on all winter.  City crews would have to clean up leaves along that median in fall and spring.  Indeed, oaks are some of the dirtiest trees we have, dropping not only leaves and nuts, but flowers, many twigs, and lichen.

Maples have smaller seeds that don’t store well for squirrels and don’t roll underfoot.  They are surface rooters that will not likely get into the pipes they are planted near and don’t bother grass growing beneath them.  

Before we planted the present red maples, we had all flowering cherries on that median.  It would have been better to replace all of them at the same time, but it will be good to continue with what already works.

Photo courtesy of Wordpress.com

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 1-20-2021

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

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

We may not need a new water plant

 

Honorable Council, Mayor and Manager,

            I was wrong.  I apologize to the ratepayers, Copeland, and all other businesses on their property.  I was wrong to support taking any part of their property to build a new water plant before all options for fixing the old plant are exhausted.

            I was taken in for years, until last week, by Staff’s assertion that the old plant cannot be fixed because the only clear well is falling apart and we can’t fix it in the time it would take for us to run out of clean water.  But how big is a clear well?  Can we not build a new one outside the present footprint of the building and use it while we fix the old one?  Then we can have two and be able to maintain each as needed.  We can proceed to fix the rest of the failing masonry while doing seismic retrofitting and then keep it maintained.  We can certainly do it for less than $81 million. 

            At Monday’s workshop, Staff went over the history of the planning for a new water plant.  A second clear well at the old plant apparently has never been considered. 

Staff did say that they considered taking several properties next to the plant to rebuild parts of the old plant while operating it, but that it would be too complicated to have to negotiate with several landowners.  As though negotiating with the Auslands, helping them and their multiple dependent businesses relocate, and paying for all that is simple or cheap?  We have been negotiating for well over a year, and now we will have to go to trial of the need to build a new plant, with full discovery, to justify taking their property.

Staff also said that they were looking at the possibility of eventually expanding the new plant to use all of our 45-million-gallon-a-day water right.  That can also be done by expansion of the old site and plant as needed.

Staff said that, of the three water-cleaning technology options for a new plant, the conventional system that we already use is the most expensive to build but is cheapest to operate.  We already have it; we don’t need to build much more of it right now. 

Operations go on forever.  Ratepayers would thank you to keep the technology that will cost us less in the long run, in that historic building that only needs to be expanded, fixed, seismically retrofitted, and maintained to last into the next century and beyond.

 Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 1-6-2021

Like Ratepayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing on Facebook

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

We will pay for this debt forever

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 10-21-2020

               A couple of years ago, Staff asked you to pass a debt payment fee for our new water treatment plant, which they said would not increase by inflation, and would go away when the debt is paid.  This made me happy; it was a fixed payment for a fixed cost, and in 30 years, it would be gone.

            Later I learned that only 60% of that debt payment would be in that fee.  I assumed that 18% of it would be paid by the Urban Renewal District that was passed to help us pay for the new plant.  But that still leaves 22% of that debt to be loaded on our rates, an equal percentage rise in the base rate and the unit rates, where it is set to be compounded every year by 4.5 times the rate of inflation, and will never go away.

            A few weeks ago, I asked our City Manager if this was correct.  He has not answered my question about the URD’s 18%, but we did learn in the Courier that our water rates will be rising by 6% every year for 5 years to cover the debt not paid by the fee.  That is in addition to the 6.78% more we are paying every year for 1.5% inflation plus 5.28% to cover the overhead that we are not paying with our decreasing water use.*

            Staff tries to make it sound like they are saving us money somehow by keeping our base rate too low to pay all the overhead, like we used to before the base started being lowered and part of the overhead loaded onto our unit rates to make us save water.  But each customer has only one base rate; we use multiple units, and as we collectively cut back on those units, both base and unit prices are raised to cover that overhead. 

            We used to pay all of our overhead with base rates because that was the cheapest way for everybody to pay for water, and we could use all we needed for any beneficial use, including watering to keep our city safe from fire.  Rates were stable.  Unit charges were literally pennies on the bill. 

Now we are oppressed by high unit charges into paying more and more to use less and less water.  Please cancel the 6% rate increases and make our debt payment fee and the Urban Renewal District cover the whole debt.  Please do the same for the sewer plant debt, which is all being paid with our sewer rates.

*I was wrong about this because FCS did not say what was being paid for in the expected 6.78% rate increases over 4 years that they put in their March 2020 memo’s rate charts.  Staff said that it does include the debt service of the planned new plant.  If that is all that their expected increase covers, they are not planning for increases to cover overhead that have been happening since 2008.  

Staff said, after this speech, that the Urban Renewal Agency (not District) is picking up 18% of water debt service, and that it can be done for the sewer debt as well.

Comment revised 1/5/21.  Shared to RatePayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing: https://www.facebook.com/groups/335132417324336

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