Current News You Can Use

Kids play in a pile of leaves.   It’s so common, it’s a cliché in the funny papers every fall.   So normal that a dad was taking pictures of his daughters playing in one, without thinking about the fact that they were playing in the street.   So obvious that an 18-year old, still a kid but driving with her brothers, drove through that pile, not thinking about what might be in it.   She felt a bump, probably thought she ran over a big stick, and drove the few blocks home before having her brother check for damage.   This happened last week in Forest Grove on October 20 th . Everyone was careless in this accident: the kids for playing in the street; their father for letting them; the girl for driving over the leaves; but first and most of all, the school district for leaving a pile of leaves in the street, an attractive nuisance that did what attractive nuisances do: attract careless youngsters into danger. This is just one egregious example of the conse...

This writer has asserted, relying on memory, that we used to have more summer rainfall in this area in the mid-eighties than we have now, and concluded that our tiered water rates are the reason, as we have been feeding the water cycle less as we save water to save money.   Grants Pass city staff have told us that we are using less every year, which has caused the city to raise rates to cover overhead, which is most of the cost of cleaning and delivering water. An analysis of three decades of monthly summer rainfall totals for the 97526 zip code, from June 1983 to September 2012, shows that precipitation in July and August, our driest and hottest months, has fallen 0.09 inch per decade, from 0.41 inch to 0.32 inch to 0.23 inch.   Average high rainfall for the two months, a measure of storm strength, has also fallen from 0.25 inch the first decade to 0.17 inch in the second, and 0.12 inch the third.    In the first decade, there were bigger storms on average in...

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 lik...

           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. ...

High water rates have caused the least among us, and the greatest, to neglect our properties.   Sometimes it’s the whole property.   Sometimes it’s just a portion.   That portion is all too often right along the street, and the street itself.   The ugliness and neglect, though not the reason for it, are all too obvious to visitors, who are not used to looking past it to what the residents allow themselves to see. Residential properties along major roads, like Bridge Street, have lower property values because of the traffic, and are thus inhabited by poorer people.   Many of these cannot afford to water their properties at our high marginal rates that cost this gardener over $80 per month in the summer.   Many of them are dry all summer, and even if mowed, are ugly.   But since no one likes to maintain ugly, many of them are not mowed, and fill with weeds like false dandelion. Some people disown a portion of their property, watering and mowing ...