Clean Water Makes Cleaner Food

          On KAJO’s Tuesday talk show this week, one of the Councilors present replied to my proposal to change our water rates to promote irrigation that it is a shame that children in Africa don’t have access to clean water, while we are using it to water our yards.

          This reminds me of what we were told as children:  “Eat your dinner; there are starving people in China.”  A smart child would say, “Then send it to China.”  An American eating dinner couldn’t fill a Chinese stomach.  We can’t send any clean water that we don’t use to children in Africa.  The problem in Africa is a lack of water-cleaning equipment, such as the new “flash” distiller that the same Councilor was talking about a few minutes before, which the Navy is using to provide ship-board water.  He said that it can clean seawater faster than it can be pumped overboard.

          I get the same kind of response from Greens on Linked In: Look at all the fresh water shortages around the world!  We have to save it!

All fresh and clean water shortages are local.  Those with a lot of fresh, clean water cannot send it to those who don’t have enough and are far away.  Los Angeles has built giant pipelines to bring water to their overgrown city, but I don’t think you want to sell water to LA. 
 

We can, however, send it on the wind over the Cascades to the Klamath Basin, by using it for irrigation and letting it blow over the hill to them, while first making rain in Josephine and Jackson Counties.

          Still, some think that cleaned water is wasted if one throws it on plants.  The FDA and Department of Agriculture might differ.  There have been e-coli outbreaks caused by irrigating with dirty water.  The Grants Pass Water Quality Monitoring report for 2003-2005 prepared by Rogue Valley Council of Governments showed high E. coli levels for all streams except Jones Creek and the Rogue River and moderate levels in the Rogue.  By using city water on the food we grow, we avoid E. coli contamination.  This is also safer water to use in a mister or sprinkler for children to play in.  The actual cleaning of our water costs very little, but cleaned water is not wasted by using it for irrigation or cooling and cleaning our air. 

          If you want to help children in Africa, donate to a charity that builds water plants there.  We have poor children in Grants Pass that are growing up without green yards or growing their own food.  Poor families are paying more than they should for household water as well, subsidizing single seniors with much more money.  The City can give a discount to seniors who are using food stamps; the rest can pay their fair share for our water plant.

 

Gardening is easy, if you do it naturally.

Petition to the Grants Pass City Council: Change our water rate structure to promote irrigation.

A major goal of the City of Grants Pass is to “be a city that looks safe and is safe.”  Well-watered, well-maintained properties are pleasing to the eye and orderly, which looks safe.  Watered yards, plants, and misters also cool and humidify the area, and feed the water cycle through evaporation and transpiration, causing rain.

Unwatered yards are ugly even when mowed, and they too often are not mowed, because no one likes to maintain ugly.  They encourage litter, vandalism, and other crime.  They are hot and dusty in summer.  They are often a fire hazard as well.

Grants Pass once had unmetered water, and nearly everyone watered their yards and maintained them.  But now we have meters and tiered water rates that discourage water use, charging little per unit for a very low base and more per unit for greater use, in several tiers.  This has discouraged watering and gardening of residential, commercial, and public landscapes, and has likewise discouraged landscape maintenance. 

The vast majority of the cost of providing clean water is overhead in plant and people; very little of it is unit cost for cleaning and pumping.  Discouraging watering of yards has made the City raise rates several times to cover the loss of income from lower water use; the last time the city raised rates, you raised the base rate to stop making the water plant’s bad financial situation worse.

Gardening in Grants Pass has become a privilege of the middle class, the rich, and those willing to bear the cost of the water plant, which is borne by fewer people as more people stop watering their yards.  One can tell now, as we could not before, who is poor or cheap.

          Many poor people, especially our elderly poor, would like to better care for their yards, but it is hard to maintain a dry yard, even for those who know how, and even harder to make it pretty.  All of us would also like predictable, even monthly billing for water.

          THEREFORE, we, the undersigned voters of Grants Pass, respectfully request that the Grants Pass City Council change our water rate structure: Charge each household a flat rate based on the average household’s winter water use, sufficient to cover Water Department overhead; price the second tier at a lower unit cost sufficient to cover the City’s unit costs of providing water; and provide the third and top tier, presumed to be used for irrigation, cooling, and washing, at no cost.  Charge businesses an individual base rate based on each business’ average winter water use, as you do for sewer, accounting for much greater size differences and water use.

This is an advisory petition

You may sign this petition on Saturday at the Growers Market between 10:00 and 1:00 PM or contact:

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