Waste Water Concerns

A lot has been said of safe waste water disposal and recently I have seen more items in which annoying organics have slipped through and affected fish populations. The reality is that we lack a bullet proof system.

The difficulty starts with the fact that all water treatment usually ends with a water product that is dumped back into the environment improved but not necessarily truly purified. My question is whether we can do something that is cost effective and actually may solve the problem.

The biggest single such problem is actually agricultural. The advent of the use of soluble chemicals on our fields over the past century has loaded our hydraulic system with these nutrients and these have over loaded specific environments causing the like of enlarged dead zones in the ocean.

The only viable solution to that problem is the advent of producing and adding biochar to soils. The free carbon sharply reduces application of nutrients and actually retains those in place. I suspect that this will emerge as a complete solution.

Then we turn to the municipal waste stream. Eliminating particulates is fairly easy, but eliminating solubles is quite another trick altogether. We now get reports on the deleterious effects of estrogens and other trace compounds affecting the receiving eco logy. In short, we do only a middling job before we send a concentrated stream of such solutes downstream.

I personally think that the best promise comes from cattail paddies. It is no trick to divert the treated sewage outflow through a large paddy and to allow enough dwell time for the water to seep through the root system. It can even be set up in strips through which the water is made to flow in a cross wise direction through the strips The only question is whether or not the plants will in fact absorb a wide range of soluables. Most important is that the cattails provide enough ready capacity to make it practical if it happens to work.

This is all new research. The industrial applications themselves are potentially endless.

One of my favorites happens to be the Alberta oil sands. There they use process water several times and then place if forever in a retaining pond. At least they did that twenty years ago. It is sufficiently saline or whatever, that it cannot be sent down the Mackenzie drainage to the Arctic Ocean. If cattails could filter out the solubles then the problem gets solved. And yes I confirmed that they grow even there.

The good thing about cattails is that most of the biomass is soluble starch which can be easily separated and converted into ethanol. The remainder can then be processed as a cellulose feedstock and this will again separate out most of the remaining organics for conversion also to ethanol. Left behind hopefully will be sludge holding most of the nasties.

So if we can so harness cattails like this, it is plausible that waste water treatment can become almost bullet proof. My sense so far is that the plants will come close without us been overly clever. Plant modification could solve the rest.

It is too bad that we cannot create a plant able to produce isolated mineral holding nodes or nodules. However solving even half the problem is better than the present.

It’s Time to Learn From Frogs

Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs.

Nicholas D. Kristof

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28kristof.html?_r=1&em

Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians began to sprout extra legs. In heavily polluted Lake Apopka, one of the largest lakes in Florida, male alligators developed stunted genitals.

In the Potomac watershed near Washington, male smallmouth bass have rapidly transformed into “intersex fish” that display female characteristics. This was discovered only in 2003, but the latest survey found that more than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs.

Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.

Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products. Some also enter the water supply when estrogens in human urine — compounded when a woman is on the pill — pass through sewage systems and then through water treatment plants.

These endocrine disruptors have complex effects on the human body, particularly during fetal development of males.

“A lot of these compounds act as weak estrogen, so that’s why developing males — whether smallmouth bass or humans — tend to be more sensitive,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s scary, very scary.”

The scientific case is still far from proven, as chemical companies emphasize, and the uncertainties for humans are vast. But there is accumulating evidence that male sperm count is dropping and that genital abnormalities in newborn boys are increasing. Some studies show correlations between these abnormalities and mothers who have greater exposure to these chemicals during pregnancy, through everything from hair spray to the water they drink.

Endocrine disruptors also affect females. It is now well established that DES, a synthetic estrogen given to many pregnant women from the 1930s to the 1970s to prevent miscarriages, caused abnormalities in the children. They seemed fine at birth, but girls born to those women have been more likely to develop misshaped sexual organs and cancer.

There is also some evidence from both humans and monkeys that endometriosis, a gynecological disorder, is linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors. Researchers also suspect that the disruptors can cause early puberty in girls.

A rush of new research has also tied endocrine disruptors to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, in both animals and humans. For example, mice exposed in utero even to low doses of endocrine disruptors appear normal at first but develop excess abdominal body fat as adults.

Among some scientists, there is real apprehension at the new findings — nothing is more terrifying than reading The Journal of Pediatric Urology — but there hasn’t been much public notice or government action.

This month, the Endocrine Society, an organization of scientists specializing in this field, issued a landmark 50-page statement. It should be a wake-up call.

“We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology,” the society declared.

“The rise in the incidence in obesity,” it added, “matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in generation of obesity.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving toward screening endocrine disrupting chemicals, but at a glacial pace. For now, these chemicals continue to be widely used in agricultural pesticides and industrial compounds. Everybody is exposed.

“We should be concerned,” said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. “This can influence brain development, sperm counts or susceptibility to cancer, even where the animal at birth seems perfectly normal.”

The most notorious example of water pollution occurred in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire and helped shock America into adopting the Clean Water Act. Since then, complacency has taken hold.

Those deformed frogs and intersex fish — not to mention the growing number of deformities in newborn boys — should jolt us once again.

Cree Nation

I was fooling around with Google maps and sketched in the two key blocks to illustrate my posts on the buffalo Commons and also what I will call the Cree nation.

Link:

<http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=117314320894484997064.0004596ba0c24a95902a3&ll=51.718029,-87.890625&spn=34.374113,74.003906&z=4>

The Cree nation block is that part of the boreal forest that is likely prospective for the development of an extensive cattail based horticultural protocol. I do not think it will be particularly easy, but I do think it is at least possible. It will be necessary to build out paddies in the extensive wetlands that exist throughout the boreal forest.

The creation of such a system will also promote exploitation of additional resources, the most obvious been the already present wildlife that can be tightly managed to maximize yield. This includes the beaver and moose particularly. Other plant species should also be open to direct exploitation in and around the wetland paddies. And the extensive lake system permits fish husbandry.

Such general husbandry has always needed a viable economic base that was tied directly to a patch of land or swamp that could be owned and managed. Operating cattail paddies does just that and provides the platform to do the rest. Europe surely had it easiest. All that was needed was to burn off a forest patch to grow hay and then capture a wild calf or two. Then you were in business.

The boreal forest is faced with near non existent soils and forests good mostly for pulp. There is no way there to provide a base crop. This is where the extensive wetlands can be tamed and turned into cattail paddies.

It may even be possible to generate floating paddies for the cattails to grow on. Fortunately most of the hard work has already been done by the indigenous beaver. Just taking advantage of his efforts will produce most of the early and easiest gains. The trick is to actually accommodate the beaver while this is been done.

It is not well known, but the husbandry of the beaver is a viable business on its own and needs to be supported. Beside the fur, which is superior, meat and musk can be harvested and marketed. Breeding will produce a larger more productive animal and a range of natural colors including white. Once a herd size is optimized in terms of a given paddy operation, a lot of surplus animals will be produced.

Moose husbandry is just as compelling. The animal is huge and easily collected and managed right after the autumn rut. It is unlikely to interfere much with the cattails, but would have no impact even if they ate cattails exclusively. They do not form large herds.

It is possible to organize a classic agricultural operation with these inputs alone. Adding cattle to the mix allows the harvesting and use of the cattail stalks as fodder.

We can have successful agricultural biome that produces cattle and starch for food and ethanol as well as a large fresh water seasonal fishery, with a range of secondary products derived from managing the local wildlife properly. It just needs a few well funded pioneers to show everyone how to do it and a bit of help from the equipment manufacturers.

Shifting Economic Winds

We are heading into the last four months of the year, a time which usually sees an increase in investment activity and generally improving economic strength. That means we can expect a rebirth in investor optimism to offset the barrage of negative press we have been subjected to this past year. It is truly necessary this time around.

The subprime disaster has shrunk the capital base of our banking system both here and globally. The huge amount of excess liquidity pumped into the economy has been sponged up through direct losses. We now have a chastened financial sector that has perhaps caught the religion of financial prudence.

That leaves one pending problem. A massive wave of bad paper has worked its way through the system almost choking it. Various newsletters have reported that a much greater wave of refinance paper will be coming due over the next eighteen months. Accepting this as true, we face the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression that could handily reduce the value of assets to dimes on the dollar and collapse the money supply. If true, the only escape will be my prescription of refinancing by a mark to market strategy. And I doubt if anyone is listening.

The true question is how true is this? I am skeptical. The fact is that Cleveland and those developer paradises in the west were the sweet spot for debt promotion. They loaded up fast and rather quickly ran out of participants. Those chickens came home to roost and have now been handled the hard way.

A lot of asset debt was then put out to folks who had a creditable plan for paying it back as is still happening. That is actually business as usual. The only difficulty is that their assets are now priced at a level that forces them to pay of those loans the old fashioned way and most will.

The equity markets have been reduced by twenty percent over the past year while this scary news was absorbed. It is now absorbing the impact of expensive energy which will take most of the next twelve months. This may squeeze another ten percent out of the market.

That will then be followed by an explosive bull market in equities driven by the rapid conversion of industry to low cost alternative energy regimes. The solutions already exist and the tooling up has begun.

For those who like predictions, I expect static power to soon drop below $1.00 per watt and I expect us to vacate the oil trade causing that price regime to drop well below $50.00 a barrel. In ten years I expect oil to be under $10.00 a barrel because we will have quit using it as a fuel and static power to be at the price equivalent of pennies per watt. That is were we are going.

We just have a little turmoil to go through in lieu of good planning. The conversion is totally feasible now and direct action can make it all very quick. The problem, if any, is the efforts of special interests to push their doubtful solution into the regulatory environment. This is the history of the corn ethanol mess. It never made any sense, but that never stopped anyone.

As I have discovered, wetland cattail starch production can bury us in ethanol at a rate that is likely ten times more productive than any dry land crop. And we have unlimited wetlands to work with that actually need the attention. Then we can enter the boreal forest if we ever need more land. If ethanol can be produced from corn at $1.00 to $2.00 per liter from corn, it is a cinch to produce it a lot cheaper from cattail starch while producing unlimited supplies of cattle fodder from the non starch component.

And then we have our modified alga that just cranks out sugar and easily convertible cellulose.

The point is that we can already bury the world in ethanol without using any food production land and do it at a low cost with modern farm technology and equipment.

The global conversion to the use of ethanol can soon be in full swing.

Wealthlands

This article from The Statesman out of India is a bit difficult to read because of weak use of English. It may have been generated by a translation program. I have done what I could by largely treating every sentence as a separate paragraph, but do your best.

Our recent article on the cattail awoke me to the unexploited productivity of wetlands in general and ours in particular. This article demonstrates the commercial potential of wetland husbandry and once again also demonstrates the need for a proper regulatory framework.

It is fairly obvious that the Achilles heal of wetland husbandry is the same as for direct irrigation in which there is both individual responsibility and communal responsibility. This problem is minimized in traditional field cropping where a recalcitrant participant can be ignored. Not so when we are managing perhaps thousands of interlinking fields and channels that is sensitive to bad practice.

Our immediate need is to produce huge tonnages of starch bearing cattails for ethanol production. While we are at it, it is only good business to perfect as many additional food sources as possible as has been done in India.
These same wetlands are natural habitats for a range of fish and game that can also be exploited.

The only reason that this has never been pursued thoroughly in the past is surely the biological danger to the operator, today partially overcome by enclosed cabins and other strategies.

Wetlands’ wealth

The onus of saving water now rests squarely on the shoulders of future generations. As trite as this may sound, Arunayan Sharma explains why

Every year, 16 June is observed as Pachimbango Jalabhumi Diwas or West Bengal State Wetlands Day. The event provides the framework for action at the state and district wise cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands. It also promotes conservation and the wise use of wetlands throughout the state for alternative resources of sustainable development.

The wetlands have always played a key role in the history of human civilization. But the link between these natural resources and the communities dependent on them has become increasingly strained.

The uses of wetlands are many. They often provide alternative sources of income for locales and for activities such as fishing and the cultivation of economic and medicinal plants and boating generate money — which can be satisfy the sustainable development of opportunity and livelihood.

Many additional services and benefits that are often less tangible are also provided, like an improvement in the quality of water, rainwater harvesting, storm and flood water management and navigable waterways.

Which makes wetlands very important, as much because these have an historical and cultural significance and a reserve for biodiversity, which accounts for the expression “wealthlands”.

And they have a have tremendous capacity to retain rainwater and prevent flooding so as to reduce the need for expensive engineered structures for flood control and irrigation.

Temporary wetlands can be classified in cyclical terms in respect of hydrology. However, most ponds and beel fisheries are extensively managed for fish farming. And such wetlands are significant in terms of biodiversity because of their flora and fauna.

Waterbodies have diverse utilities and thus support a good number of human populations that depend on these waterbodies. In addition, large spreads of both terrestrial and wetland fauna use these wetlands as breeding and roosting grounds. The profile of a wetland area changes in course of time due to anthropogenic pressure and unplanned urbanisation.

Wetlands, including shallow waterbodies, cover a meagre six per cent of the earth’s surface and supports nearly 20 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity.

The hydrological regime, physico-chemical parameters of diverse water bodies and human interference are among the major forces that control biodiversity in the wetlands.

India has about 4.1 million hectares of wetlands, excluding paddy fields, of which 1.5 million hectares are natural and 2.6 million hectares are man-made.

In West Bengal, there are about 60 natural and 12 man-made wetlands, not to forget the numerous small water bodies including ponds, lakes, ditches, puddles.

The categories combine to cover about nine per cent of the total wetland area in India.

According to a study, these spreads can be classified as wetlands of the Gangetic alluvial plains, coastal wetlands, wetlands of the semi-arid regions or the Rarh region and wetlands of North Bengal.

These stretches are mainly confined to the alluvial plains of the lower Gangetic delta.

Waterbodies in this region can be divided into four categories depending upon parameters such as oligotrophic, mesotrophic, eutrophic and brackish. The Gangetic alluvial plains include trans-boundary wetlands like Bhatiar beel in Malda district. Coastal wetlands are mostly saline in nature. The Rarh region can be divided into a plain and a plateau and most of the waterbodies in this region are of a man-made perennial reservoir type. All these are all rain-fed and remain saturated through the monsoon and winter months.

Waterbodies distributed in these regions consist mainly of ancient as well as perennial reservoirs standing on old alluvial or laterite alkaline soil with occasional coarse sand or gravel.

North Bengal can broadly be divided into the Terai and Dooars. Waterbodies in the Terai and the Dooars are distinctly different in their hydrology and physiography.

The Dooars region includes hilly streams, rivers and a few perennial and seasonal lakes and reservoirs mainly distributed in Darjeeling.

The Terai region consists of marshes, backwater wetlands and several other man-made ponds, ditches, lakes and dighis distributed in Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, North and South Dinajpur.

Bengal’s wetlands, covering only about 8.5 per cent of the India area, provide shelter to 60 per cent diversity of aquatic and related flora. The phrenology of aquatic and wetland plants is controlled by physio-chemical parameters of the waterbodies.

The diversity of aquatic and wetland plants is controlled by the height of the water table as well as quality.

The diversity of wetland plants of Bengal is the richest in the country in that more than 44 species are important as food. Eight species of emergent hydrophytes are widely exploited for rural economy.

In addition, about 21 species are medicinally important and 12 species are significant for their biological filtering capacity.

More than 45 species have become rare, five species are already endangered and six species are under threat.

In general, the wetlands of the alluvial plains of the lower Ganga deltas are richest in macrophytic plant diversity in aquatic habitat due to variations in physicochemical parameters of water and bottom sediments.

Highly saline coastal wetlands are vegetated with mangroves and salinity-loving plants. Wetlands of the sub-Himalayan and semi arid regions are also distinguished for their physiography, hydrology and floristic composition.

Perennial water reservoirs in the semi arid regions are rich sources of floristic diversity. The wetlands of West Bengal represent 75 per cent of the fern population of the Indian subcontinent.

Many of the bird species depend on wetlands for their nesting, roosting and halting grounds and they directly or indirectly depend on aquatic plants and animals for their food.

Amphibians depend on aquatic and wetland plant communities for their shelter. A significant part of rural communities manage their sustenance from harvesting wetland products.

Fish farming is easily the most gainful commercial practice in these wetlands.

In addition to that, there are vast expanse of low-lying swamps, marshes and basins which are densely vegetated with commercial reeds, sedges and other emergent macrophytes so often exploited by the rural people for subsistence livelihood.

Traditional commercial practice (other than fish farming) in the wetlands is an indigenous culture. Earlier people used to harvest wetland products for their domestic consumption.

Rural people were responsible for commercialisation of major wetland products obtained from plant resources like Typha elephantina and Typha domingensis (hogla), Aeschynomene aspera (shola), Cyperus pangorei and Cyperus corymbosus (madurkathi), Trapa natans bispinosa (paniphal), Euryale ferox (makhana).

Apart from these, the poor villagers as supplementary vegetables and medicinal plants are also harvesting several wetland plants. Several aquatic plants are also marketed for aesthetic purposes. Several new green herbs of aquatic origin have now captured the city markets along with conventional aquatic herbs.

Makhana (Euryale ferox) is a seasonal or perennial giant water lily having flat leaf surface. The leaves, petioles, sepals and fruits of makhana are covered with semi-delicate bent prickles. Makhana is an aquatic cash crop.

Makhana supports a full-fledged cottage industry, which provides sustenance to a great many rural communities. Makhana seeds are edible and fried seeds or puffs are extremely nutritious and consist of easily digestible starch.

Cultivation and management of cattails, locally called hogla-pati (Typha elephantina and Typha domingensis) is more than a century old practice particularly found in the wetlands.

Many rural people are engaged in cultivation, management and marketing of products obtained from hogla.

A coarse quality of mat and rain-shed are the major products prepared from dried hogla leaves.
Shola is obtained from the soft stem pith of Aeschynomene aspera and its cultivation for commercial purposes.

Presently beautiful paintings and silk-screen printing is done on fine mats which have become very popular.

Water chestnut locally called paniphal (Trapa natans bispinosa) is one of the traditional water crop found in India. It is commercially cultivated for its edible fruits.

Ipomoea aquatica or Kalmi is most popular or traditionally consume leafy twigs, petioles and rhizomes of several aquatic herbs. Kalmi is cultivated along the wetlands areas.

In addition, other aquatic herbs like Kachu (Colocasia esculenta), Hingche (Enhydra fluctuans), Sushni (Marsilea minuta), Alligators weed, locally called Jalsakhi or ban-hingche (Alternanthera philoxeroides) and shaluk, water lilies (Nymphaea nouchali and Nymphaea pubescens) are significant for their market potential.

Several other aquatic herbs like thankuni (Centella asiatica and Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides), kulekhara (Hygrophila schulli) and bramhi (Bacopa monnieri) are also consumed as supplementary vegetables for their medicinal values.

In addition to this, a wetland fern (Diplazium esculentum) locally called dhenki shak is also sold in the market as supplementary vegetable.

All of these wetland plants grow abundantly in fresh water or mesotrophic marshes, pools, puddles and irrigation canals and provide sustenance to several thousand families.

At least 40 species of aquatic herbs are significant for their medicinal values. Among these few species are only marketed purely as herbal medicine.

Eclipta alba (keshut) is marketed for its ability to improve the colour of the hair and the luster of eye. Brahmi leaves are commercially used in preparation of brain tonic.

It is estimated that due to growing popularity of herbal medicine market demand of aquatic medicinal herbs is sharply increasing. This has created the possibility of their cultivation in wetlands in the near future.

Cultivation of aquarium plants namely Vallisneria natans, Aponogeton undulatus, Cabomba caroliniana, Hygrophila polysperma and Hydrilla verticillata are extensively harvested from wilderness for supply in the aquarium market.

Unsatisfactory socio-economic status leads to overuse of natural resources of wetlands.

Intensive search for alternative food resource from the wetlands for sustenance has forced an alarming level of modification of physico-chemical parameters in the natural wetland habitat. This disturbance of natural wetland habitat, eutrophication, frequent change in the settlement pattern, mono-culture practice (like fisheries) for maximum profit is damaging wetlands.

Unplanned urbanisation, lack of proper management and extension of unmanaged fishing practice in wetlands have resulted in degrading wetlands resources. Encroachments in wetlands, eutrophication, and lack of national and state level wetland management policies and rapid filling of ponds have collectively resulted in disappearance of aquatic flora and fauna.

Population explosion leads to encroachment of wetlands for other land uses. Weed infestation in wetlands has resulted in shrinkage due to excessive evapo-transpiration.

Sedimentation in wetlands and unmanaged pisciculture has resulted in decline of species diversity in wetlands. Fertilisers and pesticides from agricultural run off have resulted in decline of wetland species diversity.

Situated in the Indo-Gangetic floodplains, Malda district is dotted with many large and small wetlands. Some of the major wetlands in Malda are Bara Sagardighi, Bhatiar Bheel, Tangon Bheel, Chhatra Bheel, Madhaipur Bheel, Chandipur Bheel, Gour Bheel, Nayabandh Bheel and Jatradanga Bheel.

Sadly, these have never been utilised to their fullest extent in terms of flood control and other purposes.
Many wetlands have also been wiped out to make space for human settlements cultivable lands. Effective conservation measures and management plans and policies are immediately required to save these wealthlands from further degradation.

New approaches to irrigation and agricultural schemes should be undertaken in the adjoining sites. As the district attracts a large number of migratory birds every season, steps should be taken to develop these sites as spots for eco-tourism. The Bhatiar Bheel near Malda town is one of the most diverse wetlands in the area lies endangered due to extensive encroachment and unplanned growth of the city.

Unfortunately, in India there is no national wetland policy and whatever protection is available through prevailing regulatory measures do not cover the small and medium wetlands in the countryside.

Wetlands are natural assets, although the developers and administrators fail to see it.

Wetlands and their significance, diversity of plants, animal’s resources, livelihood support values and their region wise ecological roles should be included in the curriculum of school, college and University level. Wetlands are common property of society at large and destruction or misuse of such natural resources amounts to violation of environmental laws.

(The author is director, Centre for Ecological Engineering, Malda.)
statesman