07.27.10 Code Council and ASPE Present First U.S. World Toilet Summit If ever a headline begged the indulgence of the reader, this one does. A toilet-talk summit? Who would think people would gather from around the world to discuss the intricacies of the ivory alter. Yet toilet water, without all the wonderful poisons we use to keep it clean, is a useful, nutrient-rich, toxin free resource. It’s only after we add in all the chemicals from the dishwasher, washing machine, showers and sinks that we end up with everything but the kitchen sink sliding down the drain. Getting those disinfectants, detergents and dyes out of our toilets would make that wastewater more useful and less toxic. Imagine if we could then divert  toilet from the rest of the sewage we produce. It would mean a 26 percent reduction in sewage going into our ground water, rivers, streams, bays, creeks, oceans and other undesirable places. It sounds like serious subject matter for the First World Toilet Summit, but you can be sure for the folks attending will have some fun. There's bound to be plenty of potty humor. We say “bravo” for the First US World Toilet Summit. (Sorry, we get excited over some pretty boring stuff over here at NBN.)

This message on this sign is kind of depressing. So, what’s it doing leading off the Good News section of the Good News issue of NBN? The good news is this is the entrance to the interpretive trail of the old growth forest at Gifford Woods State Park in Vermont. Old growth forest in New England is rarer than beer cans in Saudi Arabia. Gifford is one of just three old growth forests in Vermont and it’s just 18 acres. We’ve all seen the awe inspiring redwoods and cedars of the Pacific Northwest, but if you’ve ever wondered what New England old growth forests look like take a look below.

These are three trees leading into the old growth forest at Gifford. The big one in the center is a sugar maple about 30-inches wide. For anyone who pines for the days (pardon the pun) when old growth forests ruled New England, this image here is what they are missing. Disappointed? Don’t be. We're playing a little fast and loose with the facts here, so corrections are welcome. But as NBN understands it, New England old growth forests are not like the Pacific Northwest. With the  possible exception of the American Chestnut, eastern hardwoods don’t grow much larger than what you see here. And that’s great news because it means the forests of New England might already be back to their former glory, before colonists came through and mowed them all down.

Rebounding rivers and forests aren’t the only good green greetings these days. Cars and homes are becoming more fuel efficient, ground water contamination is declining through dramatically less intensive landfilling practices and improved recycling. Waste Water treatment plant upgrades and improvements in storm water runoff, are making our rivers and lakes cleaner than they’ve been in centuries.  It's hard to estimate the reach of the green movement but it appears to NBN that this is no longer token, tax-write-off stuff. It maybe wishful thinking, but it appears we're seeing a wholesale shift in global attitude., with the exception of a few morons. The benefits of all these wonderful efforts are really just starting to roll in. Just wandering through NBN's emailbox for good news one morning this past week here’s what came up.

*Flights are Greener Today and Set to Be Even More Fuel Efficient In Years Ahead
*Ocean Energy Institute steps up activity in Maine
 *Global Leaders In Renewable Energy Sign Agreement To Develop, Finance And Operate Projects Across Northeast
*Verenium Corp. reports it will sell its cellulosic biofuels business to BP Biofuels North America for $98.3 million.
*San Francisco Bay Area renewable energy businesses land $800 million in 2010 venture capital investment
*This is juist a fun site to play around with if you want to see fuel efficiency improvements in certain cars over the past 35 years

This list above could go on forever. Yes, we’ve had to pay for all these environmental protections, and replacing fossil fuels will no doubt be a painful shift in this country's industrial output and manufacturing base.  And we can’t talk about good things in the environment without paying tribute to global warming, which can still make all this silver lining stuff look like hubris. Then again, should the threat of rising tides be as dire as some folks are predicting, then global warming could be the best news of all. As Global Warming doomsday seer James Lovelock put it (we can’t find the link anywhere) in the next few decades we’ll forget all about Osama Bin Laden and his buddies and we’ll all be working side by side to save the planet. We may never know the joy of hunting wild turkey in New England’s old growth forests, or cod fishing off Stellwagen Bank before the invention of the bottom trawler. But if this country stays this course, this generation will enjoy natural resources Americans haven’t seen for the past three generations. And that's good news, if not hopeless optimism

In the Godfather, Don Corleone advises his favored son Michael to: “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Which pretty much explains why we were listening to Boston talk radio host Michael Graham—shown here in situ. Graham offhandedly referred to the “failed” Stimulus bill, as if “failed” is part of the title. In an effort to better understand his argument we called up Massachusets' Stimulus on the internet. Right at the top of this itemized list of Stimulus expenditures we found this jewel: $299k for MIT scientists to do an “analysis of microbial activity under a supercritical CO2 atmosphere.” It sounds like they are looking at how bacteria grow in bad air. It also sounds like spending five-year's salary to examine the inside of the average American refrigerator. Next up was another $299k for MIT scientists for “modeling and risk assessment of CO2 sequestration at the geologic-basin scale.” In English, this (hopefully) means troubleshooting plans to pump tons and tons of CO2 into underground crevasses, such as the voids remaining from depleted oil fields. It's a proposed strategy for curbing global warming. Right after that, there's $25,560 for an alternative energy audit at a New Jersey National Wildlife Refuge. Apparently, the Massachusetts office of the US Fish and Wildlife Service is filing for a grant to change the light bulbs in a New Jersey swamp park headquarters.

That's just the first three of 1,415 Stimulus grants being spent by the Bay State. Wading deeper into the same documents we've got:
Item 41) $25,000 to $100,000 for florescent light fixtures at various northeast US Fish and Wildlife Service offices.
Item 93) $100,000 to examine a school vaccination billing program. That's not paying for medicine, it's paying for figuring out how to pay for the medicine.

In the long term, the florescent bulbs in the park service building will save lots of money over incandescent bulbs. The same can be hoped for the energy audit. The carbon sequestration program study could find a viable technology for combating global warming which could save incalculable amounts of money, if you buy into that whole GW thing. The bacteria and vaccination billing studies do take a little leap of faith. So does $24 million in Stimulus money for computerizing a Kansas City power company's electric generation and distribution system in hopes it will also save money. (Sorry, we just pulled that KC project out of Google News, it's got nothing to do with Massachusetts) So much of this Stimulus spending seems so pie-in-the-sky at a time small businesses could stretch that money so much further. You can kind of see why  Graham calls the Stimulus plan a failure right out of the box. It's even harder to see US government workers overseeing these ambitious science projects when their agencies are already strapped for cash.

What Michael Graham's listeners, and a very large percentage of this country doesn't realize is: this country is going to be forced to change, big time. Who can see our consumer-driven model of America surviving when the rest of the world already spends so much less on their daily expenses. American's will have to as well, and that means we'll have to become much more efficient if we want to enjoy anything resembling the lifestyle we enjoy now. So, is buying more energy efficient light bulbs of state park offices really such a waste of money. Ditto for home energy audits. How can spending for alternative energy research be a bad idea when wer're spending $1b a day on foreign oil? So much of the Stimulus spending plan, as suggested above, is all about science, some of it pretty scatterbrained. Which brings us back to listening to Michael Graham criticisms of the failed Stimulus plan. Where do you put your faith: in Graham or the government? Neither. You put it in yourself. Turn on your computer and do the research. These spending plans are a mouse click away. See for yourself if  the money is being spent wisely.

During a recent hike through southwest Virginia, NBN got a close look at the Appalachian Mountains, a part of the U.S. not plagued by nitrogen loading, over-fishing, over-development, road runoff, groundwater contamination, or combined sewer overflows. However, it's got another plague of sorts: Rednecks. We're talking tobacco-chawin', beer swilling, shotgun-in-the-back-of-their-pick-up-truck good old boys that make Blue State liberals hope Darwin was wrong. And after three days riding around in a pick-up packed with Pall Malls, with a fella named “Bubba” at the helm, NBN has come to this conclusion: it might be time to move to Atkins, VA. (Bubba is not his real name. But he had no idea when we spoke, NBN was going to make him famous. You can decide if he's for real or not.)

The Appalachians suffer environmental maladies as nasty as those mentioned above: Clingman’s dome in Georgia has been denuded by the wooly adelgid, and not far from where we hiked, they still practice mountain top mining. But somehow all that passed over Atkins. This column is an attempt to explain why, through the thoughtful, deliberate folks like Bubba living in two-bedroom ranches and double-wide trailers in places like Atkins.

It's tempting to open this explanation with a few twangs of a banjo. The geography for such an accompaniment would be dead on. This is the heart of Appalachia. But the culture and people take a little more explanation. Let’s start with the stereotypes that held fast for our hike; Everybody smokes, drives pick-ups, drinks beer, communicates through clichés, wears pancake makeup and is making a frontal assault on obesity, if not having soundly conquered same. These are people you assume to be flocking to the Tea Party like 1940s Alabama Protestants to a KKK rally. And in the all-too-short time we were there it was clear they do hold fast to many Tea Party ideals, tops among them: Don't Tread on Me.

What becomes clearer when you spend a little time there is that these folks can afford to hold fast to such ideals. These hill-billies have lived on the mountains and off the lands since shortly after New England was settled. But it seems they have done considerably less damage to their surroundings in the process. You could argue there are considerably fewer of them living there to do that damage. This is where Bubba and Atkins enter the argument. The latter suffers from 17 percent unemployment that the former counts himself amongst. Bubba, haltingly called himself a “tree-hugger” only when he realized he was being paid to spend hours driving the real McCoy around the mountains he grew up in. (Bubba, seriously, what kind of a tree-hugger recalls fondly a childhood spend rubbing cats’ behinds with corn-cobs just to see how fast they run when said surface is then washed with kerosene? I gotta tell ya, my wife almost jumped out of your truck when she heard that one.)

To get a real handle on Bubba it might make more sense to describe his hometown first. Right now Atkins is on very hard times, but even in good times most everyone is a million bucks shy of being millionaires. Right now, in Atkins, $12 is a good hourly wage and lots of folks in this area are commuting 50 miles or more to make less, according to Bubba, who charged us $30 for spending 90 minutes driving to and from a trail head the first morning we met. It may be presumptuous to use Bubba as representative of Atkins, or for that matter use Atkins as a representative of the typical Red State community. But, when you see bumper stickers in town saying: “10 reasons to Vote Republican, The 10 commandments” you can be forgiven a few assumptions.And, it was clear from the outset, Bubba was no blue-state liberal.

Still, Bubba made clear these people don't fit the stereotypes so often crafted for them. Particularly, when it comes to balancing the environmental and economic needs of their communities. Here are just a few of the environmental issues of the day in Atkins and where Bubba stands on them.
*Local planners denying Shoney's a sign height variance? “Stoopid. A dozen desperately needed jobs moved one town north on Interstate 81 where the welcome was warmer.”
*Pepsi being denied water utility considerations for its plant expansion plans? “Really stoopid: 200 jobs moved one town north on Interstate 81 where the welcome was warmer.”
*Mountain top coal mining? “Really, really stoopid. You ruin the mountain and get many fewer jobs.”
In the end we found ourselves more in agreement as not with Bubba. It would be nice to think that Bubba came away from our time together thinking the same about us. Thanks for the rides and education, Bubba. Now, take a word of advice from a northerner: put down the Pall Malls!

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Last Saturday I ate what were without doubt the best raw oysters in the world at Claudio's restaurant in Greenport, NY. I have eaten several thousand raw oysters in my day. I used to catch them as a kid. I love the things. Once you get past the nausea-inducing chewy-jello texture, they have a refreshing salty meaty kind of taste that makes them go down like Lays potato chips without the crunch. One you get past the first one, you can never again eat just one. Yet in all my oyster exploits never, never did an oyster taste quite like those Claudio's served that night. They had a silky texture married to an almost sweet, slightly salty flesh that messaged your taste buds before searing the taste sensation into your cerebral cortex. Kind of like great champagne. Here's the cool part: these oysters were farmed by a resident living about a quarter-mile from Claudio's. The guy takes baby oysters, called spat, puts them into some sort of mesh containers and tosses them off his dock. Two years later he's selling horribly misshapen shellfish for a $1 each. When I shared the Claudio's experience with my father's neighbor, he told me his son-in-law is doing the same thing with nearly the same results from a small creek around the corner from Claudio's.

That's just half the story. Speaking with an oyster researcher from the University of New Hampshire this week, he had what could be very exciting news for fans of this beguiling bivalve. What is spoken of in hallowed terms by bivalve biologist as the “2006 set” is enjoying a very significant birthday this year. Not only are these oysters entering their fifth growth year, they are changing into females.

This is great news for oyster lovers. The '06 set earned a place in oyster record books as the number of spat in New England waters, and lesser so farther south, increased ten-fold. These are not farmed oyster, like the fellow in Greenport is growing, these are naturally occurring. The '06 set, set in motion a natural phenomenon that could reverse decades of devastation from a disease dubbed dermo that decimated oyster densities across the diaspora. Since dermo, and another parasite called MSX struck, you can see by the chart here, the oyster catch is a shadow of what it once was. A really short shadow. This is where the story gets interesting. Since the discovery of dermo, scientists like my UNH friend have been focused on breeding disease resistant oysters—They raise oyster in pens throw a lot of derma and MSX into the water, pull out the survivors and do it all over again. Along the way they seeded surrounding waters, near UNH and across the country, with these super oysters.

Now, there is good reason to believe the effeminate '06 oysters that are growing in record numbers in north Atlantic marshes are not only disease resistant, but as females the spat production should be way beyond what it's been seen every year since the extraordinary '06 set got things started.

Time to complicate the picture a little more before we start to wrap up. The '06 set was so successful because of what's been called the Mother's Day Storm, shown at left in technicolor and in this video. In 2006, parts of New England got close to 12 inches of rain in 24 hours. Certain salt marshes saw so much rain they became fresh water marshes for a few days. It's thought the Mother's Day storm is what caused the '06 set. Now we've had back-to-back storms in late March which dumped almost as much rain on estuaries full of oysters that were expected to have a whizz-bang of a year with or without the rain.

One more point to make. Oysters don't just taste great, they clean up the water. Oysters are literally salt water washing machines. Each adult oyster filters up to 50 gallons of seawater looking for tiny plants and animals to eat. It's believed the entirety of the Chesapeake Bay was completely filter by the oysters that once grew there every year.

So, what's this got to do with Claudios and the raw oysters I ate. Simply this: the age of the oyster may be upon us. If all these factors conspire the way my UNH friend, and a lot of others hope, it could be transformative for marshes across the country that are struggling mightily with a form of pollution called storm water runoff. Many feel it's the most pressing form of pollution in our waters today. Oyster are particularly effective at filtering this nutrient -rich water that runs off of lawns and parking lots and into storm drain and then marshes. They also can be quite effective at combating the goodies discharged by old sewage treatment plants that they get over run with rain water, a problem called combined sewer overflow. As man has perverted nature in all sorts of ways that only seem to invite calamity, it looks like the oyster could be a major step in the other direction. Here's another great story about the oyster efforts down south.

It's said that when both sides walk away unhappy, a good compromise has been negotiated. What about when boths sides are happy? That's what's going on off the coast of northern New England lately. Fish hungry residents are knocking out the middle man and buying directly from commercial fishermen. There are all kinds of benefits, like fresher fish and better-paid fishermen. What we find most heartwarming is the business model. Residents lock in the right to buy these fish by paying upfront, at the beginning of the season. They are buying shares of the catch, before the fish are caught. This means the fishermen's incomes are not at the mercy of market price fluctuations.

Those price fluctuations result in lower income and overfishing and many folks argue they are a central problem in commercial fishing today. Residents buying shares in the catch at the start of the season is a cousin to the concept of Catch Shares, spoken of perhaps too often on this page. Shown above are some Maine shrimp, the catch being sold directly to residents referred to in the program linked above. The catch with this catch is, the shrimp come with heads, tails and insides too. But it's fresher than any shrimp you'll buy elsewhere. The stuff is unreal curried. And for true fish lovers, freshness is all that counts.

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This pond outside the Hyatt Grand Champion in Palm Springs looks a suspicious shade of green, doesn't it? What are the chances the Hyatt is directing the gray water collected from its hundreds of bathroom drains to a collection of landscaped ponds attracting visitors throughout the complex? A Google search of the Hyatt's website produced nothing. Then again, coloring waste water and funneling it into landscaped ponds is not something a family resort is going to boast of on its website. Finding fish in these ponds is also a surprise. Not only is there carp, but if you look closely, there's catfish too. Again, we're only guessing about the gray water use at the Hyatt. However, according to this link, gray water water makes a decent fish pond. Then notice the type of fish living in this pond. Carp and catfish. The invasive Asian carp was imported to this country originally as a pollution control for catfish farms. Carp and catfish are pollution pals. Now ,add on the fact that Palm Springs gets less than six inches of annual rainfall.

It seems Palm Springs can hardly afford the water needed to sustain large fish ponds in what's essentially a desert. Unless, of course, that water was heading for a septic system anyway. A neat picture of efficiency starts to emerge in a town not famed for frugality. Could the Hyatt be diverting a portion of its sewer water into fish ponds? If so, we love this kind of engineering. It's turning a liability into an asset. There was even this green heron hunting along the banks of the Hyatts' fish pond. If our gray water theory is true, the Grand Champion is making a septic system into an ecosystem. Perhaps we should call the Hyatt and find out for sure. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story? Seriously, it's the point we wish to make, not the story we wish to tell. It illustrates a very smart possible use of limited resources. Such technology holds out such promise, if only it were employed more often. Southwest ground water aquifers and watersheds like the Colorado River have been ravaged through thoughtless exploitation. But as you'll read in Watershed News today, watersheds elsewhere in the country are getting a new lease on life.

Here is a chewy announcement saying that NOAA is putting together a national policy on open ocean fish farming. The idea of putting fish farms farther off shore sounds pretty good. The biggest problem so far from fish farming closer to shore is pollution. All those fish concentrated in such tight quarters means more parasites and disease which are wiping out wild fish unfortunate enough to swim near these farms. That's part of the reason for the push to place these things off shore. Maybe this policy will promote that. This is an image of a salmon farm up in Maine. The fellow here is feeding farm salmon pellets made in large part from ground up fish that don't taste as good as salmon. A lot of those pellets settle on the bottom uneaten. Add on the feces from all the fish above and the water around these fish farms starts to get pretty funky.

Now, look at how many nets there are. Now look at this link to see how concentrated these farms are getting, and how they are tucked into the streams and coves for protection. That link is the Pacific Northwest. But the same applies in the East. Moving these operations offshore, will doubtless mean less of a problem for wild Atlantic Salmon stocks. In fact it's possible all the nutrients from the salmon food and poop, could be good in those nutrient starved waters off shore. Here's a Time magazine piece on the subject that might be useful. Here's another well-written piece on the innovations to end inshore fish farming being proposed in Massachusetts.

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This Cornell newsletter might be worth a read. On the bottom of the front page they discuss Massachusetts farmers fooling around with drip insecticide applications instead of spraying. Apparently, this application works only for insecticides that work their way up through the roots of a plant, and don't have to be sprayed right onto the fruit or vegetable. Fortunately, the number of these systemic insecticides is growing. My bet is collateral bird or insect deaths will be cut way back if it can be made to work. Caution! Personal Anecdote approaching.

I was working for a cement company putting in curbing in a subdivision in 1977 when helicopters started spraying the surrounding potato fields. It started raining insects of all kinds just after the helicopters left. I clearly remember seeing a lot of dragon flies dropping at my feet. Dragon flies eat mosquitoes, lots of them. Dragon flies are good. Unfortunately, spray insecticides don't discriminate. Of course at the time I didn't realize I was breathing this stuff too. I was eighteen and immortal.

This is a cool project. Folks over at New Hampshire's Department of Environmental Services have a program aimed at picking cigarette butts off the beach. New Hampshire has the unfortunate distinction of having 11 miles of gorgeous ocean-front beach that has historically been the playground of blue-collar families from the Merrimack Valley mill towns of Haverhill, Lawrence and Lowell. It's arguably the last vestige of American honky tonk. Get your funnel cakes here. There still a few penny arcades left. Make no mistake, I love the place. More to the point; lets be honest, blue collar folks smoke more than rich people. Hence, New Hampshire has a Butt's off the Beach Day while the Hamptons on Long Island, NY, doesn't. This sounds incredibly crass, but lets face it, it's true. Anyway, I was doing a story for the Globe once on a similar effort at Hampton Beach and there were folks walking around with these portable ashtrays

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Another dam coming out of a New England river is reason to cheer. However, this one shown in the picture at right, was pulled from the Black Brook, in New Hampshire, a tributary of the Merrimack River. The folks that pulled the dam say the project will restore all manner of fish habitat. But what about Merrimack River dams downstream in Lowell and Lawrence still blocking access for anadromous fish migrating from the Atlantic to the Black Brook to spawn? The Lawrence dam in particular has been an enormous stumbling block in the Merrimack to restoring fish runs to upstream spawning grounds like the Black Brook. Here are the latest numbers of anadromous fish making it past the Lawrence dam to spawning grounds upstream.

Fortunately, there is also some good news regarding the Lawrence dam. This picture is of work crews putting in a crest gate at the Lawrence dam which is hoped to better regulate the water flow over the dam when the river is running high. The problem with fish migrating past the Lawrence dam is that during high water herring, shad, alewife and salmon heading upstream get confused by water that's spilling all over the place. Normally, the only water passing the dam washes through the turbine spillways of a hydro-electric plant at the dam's south end. A fish-lift strategically placed in the wake of the spillways, attracts migrating fish and lifts them to the top of the dam. When the river is up, however, water is spilling over the dam as well as washing past the fish lift. The counter currents confuse the fish and they don't make it to the lift, which is why the migration counts have been so pathetic.

The new crest gate, being installed here, is expected to more effectively regulate water flow over the dam so the fish trying to get upstream will get less confused. It will also make for more efficient generation at the power plant, so every body makes out. Here's a great story on the Lawrence crest gate installation. There will still be the Lowell dam impeding the Merrimack migrations, although it too has a fish lift. Unfortunately, there is no good news we could find about the future of that dam..