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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..