Roots

Being a Navy brat, and later navigating my own Navy career, nothing I could call home ever left much dust on my shoes before being washed away with the next tide. Having retired in the same southern Maryland town where I finished my Navy career, I haven't felt anyplace drawing me back home. Yet, intriguing information that my older brother just discovered, now makes me feel like Calvert County, Maryland is where I belong anyway.

According to my brother, who has long been curious about the Gillett family genealogy, our

great¹¹grandparents are Leonard R. Calvert and Alicia Grace Calvert through their daughter Mary and son-in-law Isaac Chapline. George Calvert, my great¹⁰grandmother Mary's brother, was responsible for arranging the chartering of Maryland as a colony apart from Virginia. He was a baron with the title Lord Baltimore, after which there followed six others with the same title. I've long had a vague sense of being deeply rooted in America because family oral history noted that our ancestors arrived shortly after the pilgrims. Only now am I able to feel a special attachment to a historical place of origin, and it happens to be the place where I have been living for the past 15 years 😃.

I feel that through this discovery a personal desideratum has, in part, been fulfilled. As Sister Miriam MacGillis put it:

It really matters that we exist. Not to be shoppers or professionals or this-that-and-the-other -- those things are secondary; but what really matters is this deep, deep, deep identity and meaning.

Thirteen generations is deep.

Photo by Matti Frisk

In terms of genealogy, it is possible to go deeper, but Sister Miriam is referring to reaching even further back into cosmological unfoldings to gain awareness of evolutionary history as the ongoing process of creation.

My next step back in time is to finish reading the 940 page tome by Will Durant given to me by my late mother on The Reformation - A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300 - 1564 (covering Leonard and Alicia Calvert's early years). Reading this now is very fitting for another reason, as this year marks the 500th anniversary of Luther's nailing of the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. Come September, we will also try to attend our first Renaissance Festival, which is a pretty big deal in Maryland.

Caveat Empty: The National Flood Insurance Well is Dry

One reason not much gets done about climate change and sea level rise is that government has coddled communities affected by climate-driven storm surges. Understanding that there are numerous cases which have been left to wallow and others compensated meagerly, it appears that some are nonetheless satisfied, shifting the burden onto their fellow taxpayers for their risky decision to perch themselves on the edge of a sea containing melting ice cubes.

Photo by Richard

A coddling case in point is the nearby Cove Point neighborhood, Calvert County's most flood-prone community, which is receiving federal grants to allow homeowners to elevate their homes. The same community is also up in arms over the (ill conceived) efforts to make the Cove Point LNG plant export-capable. Their NIMBY campaign stems from concerns for their safety, but the Cove Point plant has been there for some forty years, handling LNG imports, why weren't they protesting then? They bought their homes with full awareness of the plant's and sea's presence, but now they expect to be protected from both. An inflated sense of entitlement and lack of responsibility for personal decisions seems common to both grievances.

The moral hazard of rewarding recklessness has brought the National Flood Insurance Program to be $23 billion in debt, with more possibly coming in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. As claims go unpaid, or as more debt is incurred, FEMA will be loath to give money away to communities like Cove Point who choose to ignore the obvious risks.

Dock Days on the Horizon

In the Maryland Department of Transportation road show visit to Calvert County, a few local industries were mentioned to point out the value of Maryland's maritime transportation infrastructure. Three businesses, to be exact, seem to be all that they could come up with for this slice of the Southern Maryland peninsula. They were Victor Stanley, Dominion (Cove Point), and Yesteryear Wicker. These businesses employ only about 300 of the approximately 50,000 strong Calvert County workforce.

Nevertheless, change is coming in the next twenty years that will make shipping over water more common. It just won't require Calvert to rely on the Port of Baltimore. Local waterborne cargo businesses will spring up at a multitude of the private docks along the bay and inlets in conjunction with the shift of short haul logistics onto cargo bikes.

Photo by Andrew M Butler

Factors contributing to these changes will include financial and commercial collapse, the peak oil descent, America turning inward as the world closes in around it, and more need of U.S. armed forces and police, burning more fuel in their desperate effort to stop insurgencies, rebellion, and mass pillage. If the latter driving factor does not manifest, then President H.R. Clinton's last gasp efforts to hold on to dominant U.S. influence abroad will also crimp domestic fuel supply, while more Middle East oil flows to the Far East.

Let's just hope that the rising sound and fury is tempered by all parties' adherence to the Paris treaty. Otherwise, the climatological fallout could be worse than the horrors of war.

In any case, the Port of Baltimore is bound to suffer some major losses. Maryland is the third most vulnerable state (behind Florida and Louisiana) to sea level rise. The average period between Superstorm Sandy level catastrophes for the U.S. East coast is now predicted at twenty years and dropping.

Growing Pains

At one of our county's workshops for updating the comprehensive plan, a survey of the audience indicated that growth was perceived as the greatest challenge facing the county. Most, if not all, of those who gave this answer were implying that we should be making extra effort to ensure that the county grows economically. My own view is that economic growth is not in the cards, as our nation is already stagnating and the fuel for its growth (cheap oil) is past peak production. There are other ways in which growth is possible, but if the majority insist on government banging their heads against the glass wall of making America great again, efforts to collectively grow in more sublime ways will be foregone

. 

I was prepared to read a speech detailing my vision for the county's future up to 2040, but it turned out that the workshop was not structured as an open forum. Nonetheless, I emailed a link to the transcript, which follows, to the planning department for consideration.

By sometime in the next decade,
Neither the population or the county government grow. Emphasis has shifted from building a strong local economy to building a resilient one.
The ambitious economic benchmarks in the earlier plan are laid aside in order to accommodate the new realities of zero growth and to recover from the geopolitical and economic trauma of recent decades.
Federal government employment remains strong, but most Federal employees in our county telework more often than they commute.
We selectively abandon maintenance of roads, as ownership and ridership in motorized vehicles dwindles in the post-fossil fuel age. For long distance travel, we begin to use waterborne transport and a railroad built over one side of route 4, with the other side a two-way road for small vehicles and light trucks.
The Cove Point gas plant gets converted into a farm of climate-controlled, giant greenhouses fashioned out of the frames that once supported the dozen or so huge tanks that never found a use as the natural gas fracking boom quickly petered out. The biomass output of these greenhouses dwarfs anything that could be produced from conventional farming and serves as raw material for several indigenous industries, as well as for food. The nutrients for the rapidly growing crops in these greenhouses comes from thermogenic composting of treated sewage at a facility co-located with the Appeal wastewater treatment plant.
From the inception of this updated plan, our efforts turn to transitioning to a prolonged period marked by simpler living. Consumerism is out. Working in step with nature is in. Our most popular pastime shifts from going shopping to staying home making. Entrepreneurs organize ten-acre farms instead of cell phone game companies. Able-bodied citizens engage in physical labor instead of watching television. Local government and developers replace our expanding suburban wastelands with compact, walkable towns. We conduct more plays, concerts, sing-alongs, and puppet shows and put aside national television extravaganzas and world-wide web entertainment. We learn to make things of quality by hand instead of buying car loads of stamped out plastic widgets guaranteed to fall apart by next week.
Environmental restoration, including greenhouse gas reduction, becomes everyone's concern.
We realize that holding back the rising ocean is infeasible. We become proactive in moving away from coastal development in areas at risk from inundation or erosion by the bay and tidal waters. Investment is channeled, instead, to upland areas, while low lying waterfront properties grow flood-mitigating living shorelines that will gradually migrate inland, keeping pace with the rising tides.
Calvert County's landscape is characterized by forests, fields, farms and villages, surrounded by a healthier river and bay.  Habitat destruction by new land development is stymied by government-imposed barriers and enforcement of laws and regulations allowing no net loss of forests.
Cottage industries emerge to serve local needs in ways that are ecologically compatible. Many of these are in the realm of agroforestry, meaning forest garden ecosystems sustainably supply a large portion of all of our products. In addition,

* Agriculture has been transformed from its former industrial mode, though some of the new forest gardens approach farm scale as they grow
* Flowers bloom all over the place
* Fruits and nuts swell on trees everywhere and other foods grow along your path - you even know all their names and how to use them
* Citizens are educated and active stewards of the land and surrounding waters
* Fishing is better
* Previously isolated forest fragments are linked to each other
* Our habitations and surroundings are starting to look, feel, and function more naturally, enabling us to feel healthier, more alive, and more connected than we had for generations

Holding onto the elusive dream of continuous growth hurts our future environment because decision makers give a back seat to changes that don't have the imprimatur of progress. It is difficult for them to accept that diminishing returns are beginning to fall short of increasing costs to upgrade or build traditional infrastructure such as wastewater treatment plants or dams, especially if one factors in the historical costs of failure under stress. By holding onto these flawed architectures, they only close off opportunities for better, albeit less sophisticated, solutions such as humanure composting and wild rivers. Such regressive measures are considered defeatist and are rejected out of hand, even if that leads to ruining the environment and the economy.

The spike in sewage overflows caused by Superstorm Sandy may have to be experienced again in Hurricane Matthew, and more storms before someone with enough common sense makes a decision to avoid such spills in the future by recycling this valuable waste without dumping treatment chemicals into our bays and rivers.

You Too Can Be A Poop Scooping Pro

My newspaper-lined poop pickup bag method is working fine, but I will admit that, though it works great on a pile of dog biscuits, a fresh specimen of the real McCoy will often deter the most enthusiastic of composters. A day of drying can bring the less manageable nuggets to a condition firm enough to retrieve. Sometimes, when walking Gretchen, I will take a temporary pass on her pungent product and find a firmer one left from another canine in the recent past. It is easy to find these replacements because there are some well known dog latrines on all of our frequent walking routes. In other cases, Gretchen locates them for me.

Leaving my dog's feces on public property, e.g. the right-of-way, is an illegal act punishable by a fine, according to the county animal control regulations, so I would not do this in the public eye. However, if I make a practice of always removing at least one neglected stool from the roadside, I feel like a good citizen. Fines for leaving dog crap lying around in public seem severe, but you could be fined even more (or imprisoned!) for allowing it to accumulate in your yard. I don't know whether these laws have ever been enforced here, but maybe they should.  According to Mr. Dog Poop, the problem warrants even stricter law enforcement.

In order to ensure that I am prepared for my dog walk sanitation responsibilities, I have a kit that should be standard issue for every dog owner. It is easy to assemble, but an enterprising business person could possibly get them out in retail stores, also. The centerpiece is a fanny pack. In it are all of the items that my cleanup method requires. After each walk, I replenish it with the consumable items such as newspaper or bags, as needed. It beats stuffing my pockets with this and that each time I take Gretchen out. With this kit, it's just a quick grab and go.

My dog poop clean up kit includes poop bags, torn newspaper pages, grocery bags, and hand cleaner. A small garden spade or toy plastic beach shovel is also recommended for the impossible grabs.

Inspector Screening

Flickr: Natty Dread

Septic systems get far less attention than they warrant, considering how severely they affect our watersheds. Maryland delegates much of the monitoring and control of onsite sewage disposal systems (OSDS) to the counties. Calvert County's monitoring and control from the Public Health Department seems to be limited to checking installers, but they don't take measures to ensure or even encourage valid inspections. When I asked them for a list of inspectors, they sent me their list of installers. I called back to see if there was an inspector list and was told that all the installers are tested and are qualified to conduct inspections. I then called a random company on the list and asked about having a septic system inspection performed. The septic guy they referred me to told me that he had never done an inspection and seemed to think that many home inspectors do a decent job by flowing water into the tank and looking for evidence of seepage. That's the type of inspector the University of Maryland extension warns against.

It turns out that the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) does keep a list of individuals who have taken a one day course in OSDS inspections. I can use this list in conjunction with the list of installers licensed by the county to pare down the candidates for my inspection. I will look for local inspectors who aren't installers, because I think there could be a conflict of interest that would push an inspector/installer to fail your system in the hope of getting some big ticket repair work.

Either way, the inspector to hire is someone who follows the recommendations of MDE on how to conduct inspections. They should also use a checklist like the one published by MOWPA. Screening on the phone should include finding out whether they dig to uncover the distribution box and drain tiles. It will be interesting to find out how many of the inspectors listed by MDE as trained actually measure up.

No Peaking

The human world's consumption of energy and consequent production of waste heat shown on the graph here reminds me of the microbial activity observed in my compost piles by way of temperature readings. The scale would need adjusting to read in degrees Fahrenheit, but the initial climb and plateau are quite similar. The second heating phase (China joining the world economy) would be analogous to adding another huge batch of well-chopped organic matter to the pile; it brings the temperature even higher, but the effect is relatively short-lived. Once the temperature of the pile peaks at about 160 degrees, the microbial population can no longer tolerate those conditions and there is a rapid die-off causing the temperature to drop to near ambient.

Without resorting to manurial metaphor, Gail Tverberg explains how the current downturn in per capita energy consumption could well continue into a complete collapse of our current way of life. Rather than ascribing the cause to peak oil, as it is usually construed, she explains how demand destruction aggravated by enormous debt could, ultimately, be what drives our economy into ruins.

Industry hacks make lipstick out of oil and put it on the pig of energy production. Mentioning "peak oil" in conversation conjures up the idea of oil shortages, when, in fact, there is no apparent shortage presently. Though the energy quandary the world faces presently was ushered in by peak oil and peak coal, it may be better to side step the cognitive dissonance and characterize the issue as a population problem. Talking in terms of "population overshoot" or "carrying capacity" encompasses all resources, not just energy. It also brings in the even more daunting notion of the developing latest extinction of the biosphere.

Upon hearing the vision statement of a big ag oriented talk on the state of agribusiness in Maryland, I raised the question of whether the authors' views of a foreseeable future took into account peak oil. The answer was no, which led me to take many of the conclusions presented with a grain of salt. Later, in a different context, I brought up the importance of preserving biodiversity in Calvert County, which raised more discussion, but my earlier peak oil concern never got much air time. 

Raising the carrying capacity flag, rather than the peak oil flag, implicitly postulates a global context. The term is more immune to dismissal by our inured belief that substitutes can be found for everything, because it implies that limits exist. Peak oil is usually discounted by the idea that additional peaks in newly exploited resources will come along, as needed, to endlessly boost total energy production. However, pointing out that we need to withdraw our footprint from half of the earth's surface if mankind is to have a chance at a secure future brings the scope of the problem into clearer focus and sets the context to address planning in the light of population overshoot and carrying capacity. 

Jumping down from a global scale, solutions can be cast in a local frame since ecosystems function globally, continentally, regionally, locally, and microscopically . Hence, in the discussion of the future of agriculture in Maryland, a renewed program to preserve and restore wilderness in our county makes sense, though it would likely reduce land available for agriculture. This would push us to more intensive and careful stewardship of land resources, whereas peak oil, of necessity, pushes us toward smaller, more localized agricultural enterprises. Either way, we end up with a vision far different than the one proffered by big ag advocates.

Local Legalities wrt Reducing Septic Tank Usage

The Chesapeake Ranch Estates (CRE), where I live in Lusby, Maryland is a good place to promote humanure composting. Every one of our 4,000+ unique single-family dwellings is connected to a septic tank. About one-tenth of our residences are in the critical area, magnifying, manyfold, their potential for polluting the Bay. The EPA standard for septic system density is at 40 systems per square mile, an area's groundwater is most likely being overly contaminated. CRE's septic system density is around 900 systems per square mile.

"Stoplight, Septic Truck, and the Sea" by C.C. Chapman

Calvert County's phase II Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) to help reduce pollution of the Chesapeake Bay watershed is relying on a few demanding measures to improve the nitrogen removing performance of septic systems. By installing denitrifying septic systems, they can eliminate up to 93% of nitrogen discharge to the watershed from those sites. The government's cost to execute the WIP will require double the current budget, but a lot of the cost will be borne by homeowners who would have to install the improved systems at costs up to $12,000. Failed septic systems, new systems, and existing systems belonging to homes being sold would all require the expensive new technology. The WIP says nothing to encourage alternatives such as composting toilets.

The Maryland Department of the Environment makes the composting toilet alternative only mildly attractive by allowing a dwelling's septic system to be sized about 1/3 smaller.  The regulations only address waterless toilets in the context of waste disposal. In particular, they address “On-site disposal” which they define as "the disposal of sewage effluent beneath the land surface." They also levy additional permitting and inspection requirements on owners of waterless toilet systems that dispose of the sewage on-site. The whole process would appear to drive the on-site disposal alternative into the loss bracket for most homeowners.

The regulations do not delve into the possibility of recycling the manure through thermogenic

Photo by Scot Nelson

composting in bins above the ground. With that approach, once it is fully composted and cured, the material is no longer "sewage" and applying it to gardens can't be properly described as "disposal." The absence of regulation on this topic leaves it up to the citizenry as to whether they recycle their excreta, though there may also be local rules to deal with. My guess is that the county would jump at the opportunity to take nitrogen credit for hundreds of households that have stopped flushing toilets into their septic tanks and, instead, make water purifying compost out of humanure.

Clueless Commissioners

Hugelkultur may not be in the Maryland Stormwater Design Manual, but it doesn't matter for the majority of properties. If a development activity doesn't disturb more than 5,000 square feet of land, the Manual isn't applicable. Most developed properties under private ownership are not going to build more large surfaces or structures, they just get landscaped, so we can do lots of things not discussed in the Manual that will contribute to cleaning up the watershed.

Some locations are still subject to local restrictions; critical areas, for instance. There are many homes in Southern Maryland located in critical areas, i.e. within 1,000 feet of a tidal waterbody. They are critical for the obvious reason that their proximity to the water makes them, by far, the major potential contributors to water pollution. Critical area buffers are therefore, the primary element of watershed protection that should be enforced everywhere.

Violators of critical area rules are sometimes fined when they are reported by neighbors or passersby, but there could be reinforcement of the rules by a more systematic monitoring effort to identify those who bypass the permitting process or don't follow requirements when they develop their waterfront properties. One such effort was proposed by our local Watershed Restoration Specialist that would have entailed making observations of properties via boat and reporting concerns to homeowners and authorities, if necessary. The knee-jerk rejection of said proposal by a St. Mary's County commissioner elicited the rejoinder,"Why Mr. Commissioner? What are you doing illegal on your property?"

Clueless in Tarcoles by Carol Blyberg  (CC BY-NC 2.0)

I hope someone does finger that particular politician and that he ends up paying in full for whatever he is trying to hide. Meanwhile, in Calvert County, Evan Slaughenhoupt, has raised the ire of environmentally conscious citizens by his favoring of Dominion with their white elephant LNG plant construction. He also seems to favor opening the gates wider in the county to land development, with all of the lovely environmental consequences, one of which is the failing D grade given to the Patuxent River on the latest Chesapeake Bay Report Card.

Filling the Niches

While our structural practices have barriers to innovation inherited from earlier versions of the Maryland Stormwater Design Manual that would impede adoption of Stockholm's approach to planting trees, the newer Environmental Site Design (ESD) practices appear to be more flexible. In Calvert County, additional flexibility is written into the stormwater ordinance that allows alternative treatment methods to be approved and used, as long as they meet the performance criteria of the Manual.

Photo by Donghee Bae (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Among the ESD practices that lend themselves to inclusion of biochar in their construction are green roofs, reinforced turf, micro-bioretention, rain gardens, landscape infiltration and infiltration berms. The specifications for these practices not only offer biochar niches, but call for the added  performance that biochar so uniquely provides. 

• Green Roofs: the planting media spec calls for "a soil-like mixture," the base gravel layer could also be mixed with biochar, allowing longer roots and even more drought tolerance.
• Reinforced Turf: the spec requires that the turfgrass inside the permeable interlocking concrete pavers be grown on sand or sandy loam, which doesn't exclude the use of biochar to make the grass more resilient against drought and vehicle traffic.
• Micro-bioretention, rain gardens, landscape infiltration and infiltration berms: the spec allows for amendments to the loamy sand or sandy loam to bring pH to within 5.5 to 7.0. Acidic soils in the Coastal Plain could use biochar to raise the pH. The spec also discusses breaking up compaction from construction at the bottom of the bioretention basin. This refracturing step would be a good time to mix biochar into that 12" zone.

These aren't the only ESD practices that offer niche opportunities for biochar. One that might use great quantities of char in gravel niches is Submerged Gravel Wetlands. We just need to identify and quantify the costs and benefits of using that much char. 

At my first U.S. Biochar Initiative symposium, +Chuck Hegberg confided to me that the sector that offered biochar its best shot was not agriculture, but water. That sounded right at the time, but even more so now.

Storming and Norming lead to Underperforming

Just from my brief exposure so far, I have concluded that the management of stormwater runoff is typical of our engineered environment in that much effort is put into the design and construction of a device, after which ensues a lifetime of neglect. It's not due to lack of regulation or even oversight, but a lack of attention by owners and a failure of governance. A well constructed stormwater pond can degrade due to erosion, poor control of vegetation, or flowpath blockages and remain that way for years, all the while earning its full TMDL credit, though performing only half as well as it should. The local authorities are loath to penalize or even notify violators of their maintenance obligations out of fear of having a negative economic impact on business. State and federal enforcers are just as remiss.

Now that Environmental Site Design has downscaled the control of stormwater to smaller devices spread throughout a new development site, it will be interesting to see whether things will be better maintained due to aesthetics and scale. Education will be key. Fortunately, the Design Manual spells out the maintenance requirements for each device type.

Here's the type of problems that degrade a stormwater pond. The photo here is from a place I frequent that has not been maintained much for about 5 years. Trees grow on embankments where the roots compromise the dam's ability to hold water. Banks are eroded into the pond, reducing the vegetation inside, causing pooling of water, and reducing the overall pond capacity. Cut trees are left inside the pond, putting more nitrogen into the watershed as they decay. I hope to catalogue many stormwater devices such as this in Calvert County over the coming months and use this in presentations to those who need to know. They will be posted on my newest tab on this blogger site.

Saving the Bay with Sewage

With the increase in heavy rain events (the past two weeks here, for example), the chances of having a wastewater treatment plant overflow to the watershed are growing. These incidents occur often enough for us to understand how devastating they are to the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. All of the efforts going into reduce nonpoint source pollution can be obviated in a day by the point source pollution of a major overflow incident. Reporting of incidents is easy to check on the state's database.

Nonetheless, the suggestions by the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science to reverse a decades-long trend of deteriorating conditions in Calvert County's tidal waters still emphasized nonpoint source measures, such as upgrades to septic systems and riparian buffers. That's where I come in, as perhaps the first Master Watershed Steward in Calvert County (once I complete the Watershed Steward's Academy this fall and capstone project sometime next year). The role of a Watershed Steward is to educate residents and encourage measures to mitigate nonpoint source pollution of the watershed.

Aside from the usual arsenal of methods to correct various nonpoint source problems, I'm hoping to introduce biochar in buried compost filters and bunker spawn in future projects.

Photo by sandwichgirl  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Back on the topic of wastewater treatment, Biocharo  (+Kathleen Draper) posted her ideas for the top ten ways to scale up biochar production without inviting deforestation.  The number one underutilized feedstock is sewage sludge. Here in Calvert County, our dried sewage sludge is trucked off to Virginia where they find a way to turn it into fertilizer. While there may be some pollution problems with that approach, making the sludge into biochar should correct them. Not only that, we could use county-owned land right near the Appeal sewage treatment plant to set up a pyrolysis facility. Combined with pyrolysis of yard and lumber waste, this would give the county a growing income stream and save on trucking costs of sludge sent off to Virginia. Even if the local agricultural market isn't ready for it by then, there is plenty of use we could make of biochar as a stormwater management tool, while getting carbon sequestration credit for the state's greenhouse gas reduction plan.

No Free Lunch

Here in the 19th wealthiest county in the nation, we are without a metropolitan area unless you count the piece where I live, which is lumped together with part of St. Mary's county. We have a lot of farms in either county, so there should be no lack of wholesome food.

That being the case, what is behind the long-standing campaigns to grow and distribute free food to the "hunger community" in our area? Do such organized efforts alleviate long-term poverty? Do they invite outsiders desperate for food?

Two programs that stand out most are Farming4Hunger and End Hunger in Calvert County. Farming4Hunger appears to have the more honest appellation, since hunger might be a product of their efforts. Ending hunger is, of course, impossible and disingenuous as a campaign name.

The phrase "hunger community" is used in the annual report of Farming4Hunger and smacks of a caste system that implies separation of persons who rely on handouts for food. Joining the hunger community could enable a person to leave aside at least some of their struggle for basic necessities and enjoy some of the finer pleasures of life such as a home, a car, and pets.

Wait..., did I just say that a home, car, and pets are not necessities? Millions of Syrians and other migrants have come to that conclusion. The pets actually were probably temporary necessities for a meal or two, but the home and car were left behind, becoming aspirations once again as raw survival became the prime motivator.

The struggles of these refugees will go on for decades,

Photo by Stu Mayhew (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

mainly so their children may enjoy a better life. The irony is that many of them have a better chance of dealing with the economic turmoil ahead than the staid classes among whom they have infiltrated. What of those here in the 19th richest county in the USA who are insulated from those hardships. Will their children know how to dig themselves out?

Stasis. That is what is behind food giveaways. We want big ag to continue, so we have programs like Farming4Hunger that says the way to get food is through farming as we know it, and supports farmers who can't sell part of their crop on the market. We want people to think well of our charity, either as churches or corporations, so we sponsor programs like End Hunger in Calvert County which should be looking for ways to put themselves out of business, but seem interested in endless growth.

This stasis will not bring stability. Our current food system and growth paradigm is unsustainable. People need to be taught how to grow food and protect the soil. Those things, in themselves, are a struggle for anyone, but there's really no free lunch.

Fields (of Fire?)

Like a life-sized game of Stratego, the lines are being drawn between pastoral landscapes and sprawling development in Maryland. With the enactment of renewed Program Open Space (POS) legislation that expands and reclaims some of the legacy funding to create agricultural and conservation easements in perpetuity, landowners who want to dedicate some of their holdings to posterity have a little help through POS.

Photo by Jean  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Quite sensibly, the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Program targets prime farmland and the Maryland Rural Legacy Program similarly targets areas that have high value to local ecology. For Calvert County, the latter includes an area along the Patuxent River north of Huntingtown, the area between Prince Frederick and Port Republic, and most of the Patuxent River side of the peninsula south of St. Leonard. Statewide, the targeted ecological areas form a semblance of wildlife corridors that could offer resilience to a multitude of species in this time of climate chaos.

Another recent governmental move to stymie loss of agricultural land in Calvert County was the limiting of transferable development rights (TDRs) to farmland, as opposed to the former practice of setting aside residential lots, such as the one I merged to my place of residence at minimal cost a couple of years ago.

Another factor favoring a regrarian Maryland is a faltering economy driven, in the main, by world population exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. While suburban sprawl is projected to continue apace in our state, economic disruptions and declining resources will, at least, temper growth in the coming decades.

In fact, do you see what's happening in Europe with the wave of refugees flowing out of the Middle East? That is what our countrysides could experience in a few years with waves of unemployed, starving urbanites looking for sustenance outside of dried up food deserts. Project Open Space funds might be best spent on building campgrounds in preparation for such fiascos.

Agricultural land preservation probably won't be able to keep pace against greed and Gaia, so your best insurance at this point may be found among those who have been planning for catastrophe.  The PrepCon this weekend in St. Leonard coincides with Calvert Green Living, which I have already signed-up for. Either event may be a good use of your time if you are concerned about surviving the future.

Beyond Chemicals

While I see a need to have soil restoration promoted in the next version of the Calvert County Comprehensive Plan, there are already many elements of the plan and ongoing institutions promoting soil conservation. The Comprehensive Plan includes "Sediment flows from development and farming" as a threat to the vision that

Our wetlands, streams, and forests support thriving plant and animal communities.

The corresponding action is "Develop soil conservation and water quality plans for farms."

When you look into the Best Management Practices of the Soil Conservation District, it appears that they have this whole issue pretty well in hand (at least among the farms on the list of cooperators). Many of these best practices lead to soil restoration in addition to soil conservation. At least one of the BMPs, however, is potentially counterproductive - that is, perpetuation of chemical fertilizers.

Photo by Paul Riismandel (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The problem with chemical fertilizers is that they can reduce the soil biota population below a critical level where the microorganisms make the soil ecosystem work in the plants' favor. This results in the need to use more fertilizer to achieve the same results as in previous years and the soil undergoes a death spiral until it is no longer economical to farm.  Many of the trace nutrients used by plants are generated by the proliferation of soil microorganisms and could be uneconomical to add directly as we do commonly applied macronutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (N, P, K).

It may be possible to restore soil humus by intensive farming methods while still using chemical fertilizers, but a surer method is to farm organically using biochar, compost, and organic fertilizer, as necessary. The goal should be to eliminate fertilizers altogether in favor of creating humus which is self-regenerating as long as crops are grown successively and rotated from year to year. Our farmers, large and small, need to learn to do this if for no other reason than that chemical fertilizers are a nonrenewable resource. A better option, still, is to grow perennial food crops. While we're at it, let's take advantage of soil carbon restoration for its role in cooling the planet.

Mitigating Sprawl

Photo by Matt McGuire (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The information session on the rewrite of Calvert County's Comprehensive Plan offered many insights on the process, current viewpoints, and the situations we face. Attendees were given an opportunity to submit views on paper regarding the top challenges, changes witnessed, and delights of living in Calvert County. Mine were soil tilth, invasive species, and nature, respectively. The presentation that covered some of the trends since the last major plan rewrite in 2004 brought a related problem to light - land use.

According to the statistics presented, the amount of both farmland and forest lost in our county over a ten year period is approximately 5%. As of 2007, about 60% of the county was forest or farmland. A 5% loss would have brought that figure down to about 55% as of 2014. The National Forest Service projections for forest land in Maryland under various scenarios are for additional losses ranging from 20 to 30% by 2060. If farmland losses remain in step with forest losses, we are then looking at a combined loss rate in Calvert County that continues at more than 5% per decade and at least 23 square miles (15,000 more acres) sacrificed to the god of growth.

In a talk given to the county's Master Gardeners last year, the crisis of ongoing suburban sprawl was also highlighted, with the point made that this results in a loss of connectivity in our ecosystems, reducing biodiversity. The reason Master Gardeners need to understand this is because increasing biodiverse gardens are one small way to mitigate the effects of sprawl on wildlife corridors. By ubiquitously gardening in islands within the developed landscape, the hope is that many of the threatened wee beasties will be able to find sufficient food and shelter.

I wrote down my three responses to the planning questionnaire (soil tilth, invasive species, and nature) before seeing the statistics on land use. In retrospect, it is easy to see a relationship of these three key indicators to the issue of real estate development. The soil that we grow on must be improved, especially if there is going to be less area under cultivation. Invasive species must be curbed in an effort to mitigate the loss of biodiversity caused, in part, by sprawl. Nature, in general, must be given more consideration and care as we continue to spread out across the land. These are action areas that I would like to see promoted in the next Comprehensive Plan update.

Rip Tide on the Chesapeake Bay

Here in Calvert County, the inverted middle finger of Maryland, we have a Comprehensive Plan by which we pretend to shape our own destiny. The wife and I have been ongoing participants in a group called Calvert Eats Local that meets monthly at the county library to feast and keep up-to-date on agricultural topics. Calvert Eats Local is providing input, through the umbrella organization, Sustainable Calvert Network, to the County Planning Commission in order to update the Comprehensive Plan - something that has not been done since 2004.

The impetus for this update to the plan is a wide open gap in the middle of the county seat, Prince Frederick, which appeared when an old middle school and armory were demolished. The Comprehensive Plan has a chapter on Economy which may bear most immediately on the new purpose for this piece of real estate, though I would hope that the People chapter, under the topic of Community Interaction, would play a larger role. Either way, focusing at this stage on the development of this parcel would compromise the integrity of the Comprehensive Plan, as in the tail wagging the dog.

A lot has happened in the world since 2004. I wonder if our planning commissioners have a good perspective on the economic, financial, ecological, demographic, technological, and natural resource developments that are driving our world, nation, and communities into a new era. Keeping in mind the precept that plans are nothing, but planning is everything, we should be able to improve our future through this thought exercise, as long as we don't swim against the rip-tide or exhaust ourselves trying to swim out of it.

An aerial view of the rip currents shows a financial crash in the offing followed by many years of economic adaptation. After the crash, eddy currents of energy and other natural resource peaks will drown much of what we have come to expect from commerce. The dilemma of the drill-baby-drill (or frack harder and deeper, baby) solution is that this has gotten to the point where earth, sea, and sky are revolting against further violations of whatever remains of our planet's purity. In fact, just backing off isn't going to prevent earth, sea, and sky from taking out their grievances on future inhabitants. Our future economies will be shaped by climate adaptation and, if the Paris climate agreement and the Maryland Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act mean anything, genuine consideration.

I doubt if our county planners will take this view unless the tide of the public's perception is swept in this foreboding direction and we cry out. Otherwise, our planners (even against their own misgivings) will rationalize and temporize these matters and pretend we can sustain the unsustainable.

Our focus in the Calvert Eats Local group is on the economy, with the outdated plan putting forth a vision that,

We are building a strong local economy based on renewable resources, high technology, retirement, recreation, and tourism.

Last night, among many other changes proposed by our group, I suggested that the word "strong" here be replaced by "resilient." Strong materials can also be brittle. Resilient materials, though somewhat strong, can handle a beating without shattering. We should try to make Calvert County shatterproof.

If you want to help shape the new Comprehensive Plan, there is a public forum on Thursday, 21 April at the Prince Frederick Library at 1 pm that will include the County Planning office. I may have more to say about our economic future at this meeting.

Home and Hearth

In a state that is one of the top three in home mortgage foreclosures and in a neighborhood that has greater than 10% vacancy, it's hard to justify investments in one's dwelling unless you are destined to remain in place regardless of the market. It becomes a speculative decision which includes factors of the local economy, energy prices, and climate-driven demographic shifts.

In our case, I believe these factors favor energy upgrades to our home only as a long-term investment or if the energy savings payoff begins within three years. I see our local economy continuing to be buoyed up by the national security apparatus, of which our portion is Naval Air Systems (NAVAIR). I see grid electricity becoming more scarce as the fracking bubble bursts and coal gets left in the ground. Finally, the climate-driven migration of westerners to the east will probably take a decade or so to begin.

The net result looks to me like the value of homes in Southern Maryland will not fall too heavily before they start to recover sometime around 2025. Our own lower tier neighborhood, the Chesapeake Ranch Estates (CRE), will fall harder and recover slower than most. Becoming a municipality would ameliorate CRE's decline, but that looks politically dubious. However, if the Board of County Commissioners realizes how badly they ignored our concerns over the Cove Point gas plant LNG expansion, they will approve our municipality petition as consolation.

There are a host of things you can do to save energy in your home. We have a dishwasher that costs us an estimated $35/year in excessive energy usage over the newer Energy Star models. It recently leaked slowly into our kitchen floor and through the basement ceiling, causing over $10,000 in damage. After twisting the stingy arms of HMS, our home warranty company, I expect this old dishwasher to be repaired, after which I plan to sell it and get a newer model (and fire HMS - they should have replaced it outright).

While solar power looks slightly uneconomical for us at this point, I would consider installing a solar water heater. Water heating consumes about 18% of a typical home's energy. Over three years, cutting my electric bill by 18% would total to about $1,000.  Perhaps a DIY installation of a solar water heater would make sense.

Before that, the project that looks most lucrative is to augment our electric heat pump with a wood-burning stove that could potentially shave a whopping 45% off our electric bill! So now we are looking at about $3,000 saved over three years. Rather than rely on pellet fuel, I will have to look into rocket stoves.  I produce lots of kindling in the process of making biochar. If it can make my home heating costs disappear, making more sticks would be no problem. I can picture us being warm all evening in the basement watching the glow of a real fire, then retiring upstairs with the risen heat to comfort us throughout the night. It's a picture that, in the end, makes mechanized heat less desireable than the more labor-intensive way.

Terror Starts at Home

The heightened level of "security" brought on by the most recent global terrorist attacks and threats will likely be evident in several ways to all Americans right where they live.  One local organization that is primed to play in this game is the Calvert County Sheriff's Department.  They have been itching to take on any would-be disruptors of our sedate rural existence, so much so that they zero in on whatever appears alien.  Out of state license plates are one clue.  Visiting for the purpose of protest is another.

A situation like the one recently at Bank of America stadium involving repellers with a banner protesting the Cove Point Plant expansion was resurrected recently when charges and counter-charges were filed over the treatment of protesters who had been arrested following the crane climbing incident early this year at Dominion's staging site on the Patuxent River.  It is not at all surprising that the Sheriff's Department would put a stop to such a stunt.  Their main concern, however, appeared to have been avoiding prolonged embarrassment from any perceived inability to control a one-off situation (rather than concern for the safety of those involved).  Hence, the degree of paranoia necessary to assertively respond to the latest scare is endemic to our county's law enforcers. In the crane incident, it will be difficult to tell whether the counter-charges by the Sheriff's Department against one of the protesters for making false statements to an officer is legitimate (unless an audio recording was made), since it will be probably be a case of several officers' words against one interloper.

I'm not into conducting acrobatic stunts for public attention, so it's a bit hard to empathize with the crane climbers (though easy to believe their rendering of the bungled "rescue" by Sheriff's deputies), but reading about a more recent incident that involved out-and-out harassment reminds one of the infamous reputation of Baltimore's cops wrought from Freddy Gray's killing and reflected on the TV series, "The Wire."  The targeted group in this case was not the urban, drug-dealing set, but the socially conscious, anti-fracking set.  It seems our Sheriff's Department is intolerable of either of those extremes and feels it is their duty to violate individuals' safety and constitutional liberties to protect Calvert County (and their own personal benefactors) from any intrusion on the speedy execution of a project voted down by local opinion.

While I think the Cove Point expansion is a white elephant and economics, rather than activism, will kill it, the picture these incidents paint of our Sheriffs make me very leery of the more permissible homeland security rules-of-engagement they will operate under going forward.  It wouldn't take much on your part to wind up under a jackboot that you once thought was your protection.

Future Reedy

Calvert County's school district, like over 2,000 districts across the country, took a pledge recently to support the Future Ready initiative that attempts to level the digital playing field for students while enhancing the payoff of technology-based learning.  Half of Maryland's school districts have taken the same pledge and almost all are sure to follow suit, since parents and corporations are quite concerned about youths' ability to deal with the work challenges of the future.

In Calvert County this year, there was a lot of anguish over the 2016 budget squeeze which resulted in possible cuts to many extracurricular programs.  Nevertheless, the march of technology is going to require more funds, some of which will have to be paid by the school district.  It will probably mean that students will have fewer opportunities or incentives to become athletic and will be more encouraged to become geeks.  This is an unrealistic plan since the energy-deficient future these kids will face will actually require of them more physical strength and endurance than their parents had.  High school represents the best opportunity for most people to grow into strong adults.  Confidence in one's abilities and perseverance gained in those years can carry on through life.  The challenges faced by one generation are not going to be the same for their offspring.