Letting Off Steam over Leaky Pipes

Being skeptical of the natural gas boom and, in particular, Dominion-Cove Point's ability to operate for very long, if at all, due to a diminishing reserve of natural gas to export, working to prevent this from happening has not been high on my agenda. However, if tonight's Maryland Public Service Commission hearing in my town was of any help in slowing the runaway train of this plant's start-up, I will be pleased.

I addressed the commission tonight with regard to the changes sought by Dominion alleviating the limits on how much volatile organic compounds (VOCs) could be discharged from leaky pipes and valves. My major points pertained to the need for the commission to not make a rushed decision and to consider amending or rewriting the procedures for leak monitoring and repair.

It would surprise me if the Commission takes action on these recommendations, but I enjoyed having the opportunity to address the public with some cogent observations. If my recommendations were adopted, I could see the ultimate result being impacts to Dominion's bottom line, since it would require more attention to stopping large leaks promptly instead of at the convenience of the plant's shutdown schedule.

If the Commission accepts Dominion's proposed changes as is, then I could see the result being major health hazards occasionally realized, impacting vulnerable members of the community who live in the area where plumes drift outside the plant boundaries.

All-in-all, I think the liquefaction plant's over 2 Megatons of annual greenhouse gas emissions is the main problem, rather than the 20 tons or so of annual VOC's. Nevertheless, I managed to pull off my best public speech ever and hope there will be more opportunities to exercise a talent that has heretofore felt to be wanting.

The Mid-Atlantic's Coming Green Revolution

In establishing the Healthy Soils Program, Maryland has begun to officially view soil in terms of biological populations, organic content, structure and water-holding capacity, and carbon sequestration. Everybody wants healthy soil, but for the past 70 years, conventional agriculturalists have been satisfied merely with healthy crops. Food for those crops has been supplied by chemicals known to help them grow. The soil fell into neglect, and in the process, we lost a lot of carbon from the soil and released a lot of nitrous oxide through chemical production. The Healthy Soils Program, then, is a way to recover from this unforeseen consequence of the Green Revolution by reducing the severity of our recent interventions in soil fertility.

In promoting healthy soils, Dr. Sara Via brings out a few principles farmers and gardeners should follow. I have annotated them here with my comments for gardeners:

• Rotate crops - some crops, e.g. tomatoes, should be rotated over 3 or more years
• Limit soil disturbance - soil structure is preserved thereby; use a broadfork to input OM
• Limit chemical inputs - e.g. phosphorus, since an excess will subdue mycorrhizae
• Increase biological diversity - compost increases soil biodiversity; biochar multiplies that
• Keep the soil covered - keep your garden dressed (like the one in Eden)
• Maintain live roots - when the roots die, mycorrhizae die back, too (90% of plants use MR)

  

  Photo by Tamera Clark

These may turn out to be Maryland's fundamental principles for healthy soil agriculture, as they support the four objectives in the new legislation.

Another way to increase soil microbial and faunal biomass, porous soil structure, and carbon sequestration is to add biochar, which Dr. Via also acknowledges in her talks. Among organic growers, biochar is still somewhat arcane; less so with the permaculture crowd. It is going to take a while, however, before most Maryland farmers adopt it unless the Healthy Soils Program adds incentives to do so.

Neighboring West Virginia, on the other hand, has become a potential beehive of biochar activity, stemming from the Appalachian Biochar Innovation Conference held this month that brought together makers and users of many stripes, as well as government and academic leaders. One of the largest potential applications there is in mining remediation. Strip mines and missing mountaintops could be restored to vegetative growth (ironically) with real clean coal, i.e. biochar made from dried manure. Joseph Kapp, Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College's Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and organizer of the conference, is ready to form a working group for the state to move ahead with biochar in its many applications. It was electrifying to be in the room when the upwelling of consensus was voiced by attendees that this is now a big part of their vision in a state long sullied by dirty coal and other chemical industries.

Like Maryland with their Healthy Soil advocates, West Virginia is starting with a small group of perceptive and determined people. Between us and climate conscious states like New York, a New Green Revolution may soon grow in the Mid-Atlantic region; all the more so if the U.S. Biochar Initiative (USBI) symposium takes place in Pennsylvania next year as rumored.

Loosening the Grip of the Grid

One of the distinctions made by zero waste advocates is that incineration of waste to reduce landfill use exacerbates pollution. Waste industry apologists credit Maryland Governor Larry Hogan's decision to withdraw limits on landfill expansion as an effort to avoid shifting the burden to incinerators.

That might be a defensible position if Maryland's landfill gas emissions were well controlled and not the highest human-caused source of methane in the state. Fortunately, the U.S. Appeals Court rode to the rescue in their recent ruling against the EPA's delay tactics on oil and gas well methane emissions. Since the EPA has also postponed the implementation of new landfill gas emissions requirements, expect that the court will also find that decision to be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious. More landfills will then be required to incorporate gas collection and control systems. This should serve to pressure states to become more waste conscious.

Waste consciousness should not be left to government regulators. Citizens should police their own waste streams rather than shift the burden to government and industries. Energy and waste management businesses should absolutely be required to cut emissions from their operations, but individual households may find it economical to stop relying on those profiteers and find more DIY solutions.

Such solutions are not hard to find. Humanure composting is not a first world concept, but it makes economical sense. For other organic waste, a quick Google search led me to what appears to be an economical household replacement for capturing landfill gas emissions: a solution that would pay for itself by turning your "waste" into fertilizer and cooking gas. That biogas could also be used to purify water if you add a Stirling engine generator and water distiller, as inventor Dean Kamen and DEKA Research have been doing for the third world with their Slingshot system. The biogas generator may not be functional in the very cold months (though a straw bale enclosure next to one wall of the house might alleviate that), but I would probably only use it for outdoor cooking in seasonable periods anyway. If anyone out there knows my wife, please drop hints to her about what a great invention HomeBiogas is.

Drawdown - Guidance for Policymakers

In The Humanure Handbook, Joseph Jenkins assails our habit of wasting things.

We have kitchen “waste,” garden “waste,” agricultural “waste,” human “waste,” municipal “waste,” “biowaste,” and on and on. Yet, our long-term survival requires us to learn to live in harmony with our host planet. This also requires that we understand natural cycles and incorporate them into our day to day lives. In essence, this means that we humans must attempt to eliminate waste altogether. 

In Don DeLillo's novel, Underworld, the waste underlying modern life resurfaces throughout the tale. The advocates at eco-cycle Solutions are all about solving the waste problem. They and the folks at Trash-Free Maryland were surely disappointed when Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced an end to Maryland's Plan to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle Nearly All Waste Generated in Maryland by 2040.

Stepping away from waste reduction is a mistake. We can benefit both economically and environmentally by improving industrial and residential recycling. According to research in the Drawdown project, household and industrial recycling each have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.77 GtCO2 eq if practiced globally. They also bring lifetime savings of $71 billion apiece. Those savings do not even include related solutions such as paper recycling, biochar, and composting. The solutions to global warming in Drawdown are posited as

“no regrets” solutions—actions that make sense to take regardless of their climate impact since they have intrinsic benefits to communities and economies. 

Hogan's decision to set aside the zero waste plan may be defensible if he, instead, prioritizes other, higher ranking solutions in the Drawdown list. There are several for him to choose from. They will all be needed soon, so he shouldn't neglect waste reduction for long.

First they came for the Muslims, but I did not speak out - Because I was not a Muslim...

George Calvert's vision for Maryland was a religiously tolerant colony where citizens would be entitled to live as landed gentry.  Lord Baltimore had embraced Catholicism, though much of Europe was turning to Protestant puritanism. As a consequence, Maryland became a refuge for all faiths; for Catholics especially.

It is not unlikely that there were even some Muslims among those who settled early in Maryland, but most came later to the colonies as slaves. It is estimated that up to 1/3 of the slaves in the colonies were Muslim. Their faith did not flourish in the new world, however, as religion was just another part of their liberty that their Christian overlords decided to withhold.

Repression of Islam by American society (like that which occurred in the early years of our democracy) has surfaced again since we became embroiled in constant war in the Middle East. A homegrown propaganda industry has warped many Americans' perception of Islam no less than the Russian propaganda machine slandered Mrs. Clinton, while boosting DJ tRump. DJ Blowhard's popularity going into the election was also enlarged by his stance against Muslim immigrants. Yet, we saw the blowback as soon as the vote count was announced with marches decrying his racism. Many of those aroused by this issue were college students. If deportation of Muslim student immigrants were to commence (the specifics of each case, no doubt, remaining classified), it would not surprise me to see a revolution begin on campuses across the country, led by sympathetic millennial cohorts.

By Andreas Hierling

The Green Party is sympathetic to the plight of American Muslims who have suffered greater persecution lately and are in a state of alarm over how the new administration views them. Rephrasing the steps from the Green Party report on Islamophobia, Greens are encouraged to take the following public actions:

1. Educate others in your circles and correct blatant misperceptions voiced over Muslims and Islam.
2. Seek information and advice from Muslim leaders on current issues as to how they are seen by the Islamic community.
3. Be conscious of how your own words and manners can be oppressive or demeaning to Muslims.
4. Diplomatically intervene on behalf of Muslims being oppressed, subtly or overtly.
5. Build bridges between your own faith and others of different faiths.
6. Work together on common goals and projects in the community, with an eye to improving cross-cultural understanding.

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.

The Chesapeake Bay in Greater Peril Than Ever

While the estuary on a stick known as Maryland girds for legal battles over continuing the federal program to restore the Chesapeake Bay, the global force of climate change will increasingly hamper the region-wide effort even if the program ends up being fully funded in the official federal budget.

We are already able to discern the impacts of climate change on the Chesapeake. For example, though most of the world is losing access to water, the northern Chesapeake Bay area where I live has gained 6.6 inches of annual precipitation over the last century. In some respects, this is beneficial, but the major negative effect of more heavy rain is runoff into the bay and its tributaries, causing pollution by nutrients and sediment. This is exacerbated by urbanization throughout much of the watershed. Building codes and local governments are racing to keep up with the problem of stormwater runoff caused by development.

Rising temperatures affects a number of other aspects of the bay ecosystem. One is the profusion of Vibrio bacteria which spreads cholera and a similar disease either by ingestion or through skin lesions.

Before President Blowhard dispenses with climate change throughout the executive branch, government-funded scientists are valiantly assembling reports explaining its observable and anticipated effects. With the amount of rainfall increase we have observed with just a 1.5 C temperature increase, it seems that we should expect significantly more in the coming decades if global temperatures continue to go up exponentially.

From Albert Bates at The Great Change

The graph here shows a generic temperature curve along with several global macronomic indicators modeled in the Limits to Growth study. You might note that the human population is expected to drop in about thirty years (as food becomes too scarce) and think that this will flatten the temperature curve, but there is a delay between cause and effect in global warming as vertically circulating ocean currents cycle over a millennium meaning that increases in ocean temperatures and release of dissolved CO₂ will not achieve their full effect on the atmosphere until decades after the greenhouse effect is arrested by lowering atmospheric carbon.

Bottom line: we can't restore the bay by taking our current inadequate measures. Rising atmospheric temperatures make it necessary to exercise even more severe measures to avoid pushing the bay beyond recoverable limits.  We should not only continue to limit runoff from new and existing development, but we also need to rethink urbanization in terms of permaculture and apply afforestation wherever we can.

Smoke on the Water

While states in the southwest dicker over who gets the last slurps of the Colorado River, here in Maryland we are at odds with other states in our region over the spillovers from their industries on our air and water. The paralysis at the EPA over budget cuts and policy changes leaves us hanging.

The water pollution in question is that affecting the Chesapeake Bay which is almost wholly located in Maryland and Virginia, though polluted water may enter the bay from the four other states in the watershed. Farming is often assigned culpability, but urbanization is more and more to blame. It has taken decades to get the six states and D.C. to agree on strict pollution reduction measures. Without the EPA to manage this agreement, it will be difficult to ensure that all parties abide by it.

Photo by aka Tman

The air pollution comes from several more states, mainly to the west of Maryland. The EPA has been less instrumental in helping Maryland and the bay with this problem. The problem stems from power plant emissions that settle on the Chesapeake Bay watershed causing nitrogen pollution and lingering in Maryland's air where the oxides are transformed into ozone which causes smog and endangers health. Maryland's remaining coal-fired power plants are relatively clean when compared to those outside the state that do not measure up to Maryland standards.

Ever since President Blowhard was voted in, the EPA has hunkered down to see what survives of their agency. Consequently, Maryland's petition asking them to enforce the Clean Air Act (not the Clean Power Plan, which recently became defunct by Presidential decree) has mouldered in an EPA inbox rather than elicit a response by the 60-day deadline. In particular, Maryland is requesting that clean operation of power plants be based on more frequent smokestack readings because the averaging of readings allows much more pollution than the figures might show. The other states involved have not been willing to adopt these requirements when requested by Maryland.

Resource sharing and cross-border pollution are two conflict areas that, if the federal government doesn't help to resolve, could drive states farther apart, making continuation of the union all the more difficult as we negotiate the climax of our secular crisis.

Green - The Party (You Didn't Know) You Want

Do you think it is any coincidence that the richest state in the country sits on the north side of the repository of all of your federal U.S. tax dollars? Maryland is the wealthiest state in terms of per capita income and millionaires per square mile, so it would appear that the capital in The Capital is being leveraged for private gain not too far away. The rising tide has also kept 90% of boats from grounding, keeping Maryland ahead of most states with respect to poverty rates. This privileged position makes it improbable that any Green Party candidate would succeed in winning an election in Maryland, especially when the Maryland Green Party platform is that of the parent Green Party of the U.S.

One of the reactions that the idea of the somewhat socialist Green Party provokes is that wealth would disperse to the undeserving masses, but why should it, instead, concentrate in the hands of those closest to the halls of power? Is the ability to direct the affairs of a democratic society so rare that it can be vouchsafed to only a very few who have elbowed their way into luxurious appointments clustered incongruously around the nation's most polluted river? The Green Party wants to spread prosperity and governance throughout the land, rather than keep it in the firm grasp of the mighty.

Take a look at their solutions for local economic development and see if they don't fill you with excitement. The list of imperatives under this section of the Green Party platform return much decision-making power and revenue to local governments, businesses, and workers. Would that not be vastly better than abdication of decision-making over the business character of our communities to the faceless, heartless bureaucracy in Washington, DC? Local jurisdictions would not be compelled by economies of scale or federal agencies to accept dominance by major corporations, because the Greens have plans to cut down those corporations' political and market power, too.

Oh, and that scary adjective I used in describing the Green Party ("socialist") - the platform provides a concise glimpse of how that would look in the section on Work and Job Creation (italics mine):

To begin a transition to a system providing sustainable livelihood, we support:

1. Creating alternative, low-consumption communities and living arrangements, including a reinvigorated sustainable homesteading movement in rural areas and voluntary shared housing in urban areas, i.e. homeless people outside of cities would be helped into low cost homesteads, and those in the city into shared housing.
2. Universal health care requiring coverage for all.  (Single payer system, like that in many other countries, e.g. Canada, parts of Europe) 

However socialist the Green Party of the U.S. is, the adjustments that involve shelter and care for all residents are hardly radical. The Ten Key Values of the Green Party provide additional background on the changes sought for the sake of economic justice:

We call for moving beyond the narrow "job ethic" to new definitions of "work," "jobs" and "income" in a cooperative and democratic economy. We support restructuring our patterns of income distribution to reflect the wealth created by those outside the formal monetary economy – those who take responsibility for parenting, housekeeping, home gardens, community volunteer work, and the like.

It's not welfare we're talking here, it's compensation for socially valuable contributions that are currently devalued by capitalism.

When we have two main parties with candidates that espouse right and far-right policies vying for the top job, it should prompt us to look for alternatives that offer more left-leaning views. The Green Party is a step to the left that would help the U.S. revisit democracy.

Don't just vote your ticket, vote for what you believe.

Green is Good

Intentionally, or not, the new, fascinating CBS TV series "Bull" made a subtle contribution this week to promoting Hillary Clinton's election. The episode featured a female commercial airline pilot on trial for alleged pilot error resulting in the fiery death of 70 passengers. The defense's closing argument was capped with a picture story that asked the jury to identify the hero among a group of children being accosted by a bully. The hero, to the surprise of some of the holdout jurors, was a girl who snitched on the bully. In spite of the odious character opposing her, Hillary Clinton must still overcome the same unconscious bias that some of the jurors harbored.

In my first ever casting of an early vote, I had my ballot scored in less than a minute, not for Hillary, but for two women, nonetheless. Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers, both doctors, were my picks for President and Senator. My Green Party affiliation steered me to these choices, though I know much less about either of them than I do about Clinton or Trump. On the other hand, I know more about the Green Party platform than I do about the Democratic or Republican. I don't have a full grasp of it, and disagree with some of it, but I also see the parties of the 1% mismanaging our affairs, first in the handling of financial matters, but on multiple other issues, too.

Though the Green Party seems to espouse extreme left views compared to the norm, there are other reasoned viewpoints that would make Jill Stein look fairly moderate. Realizing that Jill is highly unlikely to win the election (this video shows that the Greens realize this will be a long, hard slog), it may be necessary for me to become a more active Green Party member or even take on some of the more radical views and approaches of the anarchist movement in order to see improvements made before too much is lost.

Canoe U - Who Knew?

Consciousness of global warming will rise with the seas. Other parts of the world, particularly the Far East, will gain consciousness earlier than America, but the truth will become clear to those of us on the east coast faster than you might expect. Studies modeling climate change often select the turn of the next century as the datum for reporting outcomes, leading casual readers to think that the interim won't pose a major problem. In the case of sea level rise, it is important to understand that there is no escape - we are already locked in to being driven back by the sea in many littoral areas regardless of how much we mitigate carbon emissions. The more salient question is: how quickly will the seas continue to rise?

Recently, scientists have found that there is a strong possibility that previous estimates of the inextirpable rate of sea level rise are short by half if the West Antarctic ice shelf calves off into the drink. A study done this year looks at what that could mean for east coast U.S. military bases. It also includes a scenario for the case that Antarctica doesn't fall apart. Either way, bases on the east coast will struggle to adapt to the sea's encroachment on their territory.

The Navy will gain awareness more quickly than other services as a result of port visits in Japan, the Philippines, and other countries where sea level rise is having a more dramatic effect. Several coastal military bases will also find themselves surrounded by communities suffering from increasingly flooded homes and businesses. As storm intensity increases, the rise in mean sea level can also be magnified by storm surges, so natural disasters will convince many more military leaders of the problem sometime in the next two decades.

Annapolis, though hardly the most severely impacted, has a recent litany of incidents that serve to raise awareness of not only the Navy community, but also Maryland lawmakers who convene about half a mile up the street from the frequently flooded dock area. Even without the new alarm over Antarctica, projections are for an increase of flooding events to 180 times per year by 2030. The Naval Academy has already seen an increase in flooding and can expect to lose all of its athletic fields along with several buildings over the long term.

Photo: Bill Taylor 

There will probably be those from the "ships at sea" school who try to capitalize on the expansion of their nautical domain, but they will be outnumbered by sand crabs who won't appreciated being flooded out of their secure nooks. I wouldn't be surprised to see an increasing number of midshipmen being steered into oceanography or other new environmental majors in the coming years.

Plan on Pedaling

One of the ways Maryland is trying to improve transportation is to support bicycle riders and pedestrians, especially in the more populated towns and cities. There is a lot of progress to be made, since Maryland ranked 39th in the nation for bicycling when the O'Malley administration decided to do something about it. What they came up with is a 20-year plan with the vision that "Maryland will be a place where bicycling and walking are safe, practical, and inviting ways for people of all ages and abilities to complete their everyday travel."

Much of what they are doing deals with bikeway construction. You can use the interactive map to find roads that are good for cycling. There aren't that many in my area, but one way for me to use the map is to find bike roads in populated areas where I might need to spend a day and take my bike along for intracity travel, rather than worry about parking costs or bus fares.

Regardless of how many bikeways there are now or in the future, bikes are going to be a primary means of travel and roads less and less dangerous as gasoline becomes more scarce. In the upcoming rearrangement of our economy, bikes will be more valuable than gas-powered cars. Until then, stocking up with bicycles and bike accessories would be a good investment strategy.

I'm not talking about gathering a collection like that of the late Robin Williams. He loved bikes for recreation and sport, but utility will be, by far, the value proposition for bicycles in the coming age. In that vein, there is a class of bicycles known as "cargo bikes" that will be used for short haul cartage in lieu of cars. There are enough makes and models of cargo bikes to make any collector happy, though they tend to be expensive.

My dream machine would be an electric-power assist bike like Felt's Tote'm. You might fall for it, too, by watching Felt's short video. My closest distributor is Parvilla Cycle up Annapolis way.

Before I shell out four grand for an electric bicycle (which may eventually prove essential with all the hills in my neighborhood), I will try to work my carrying capacity up by putting a front and rear panniers on my comely, but heavy Schwinn Wayfarer.
 
A step up would be to get a lighter weight cargo bike.

Yes, there are alternatives to cars. We aren't going back to the stone age.

Collapse's Silver Lining

Photo by Lynne Hand

Maryland's Energy Administration can claim the lion's share of the progress in greenhouse gas reduction for the state over the past seven years, though several facets of the EmPOWER Maryland Program are led by other agencies. Transportation, which emits roughly one-third of the state's greenhouse gases, has not been a major contributor to Maryland's success in pursuit of the 2020 mandated emissions reductions. Greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles has decreased, but not at a rate that would make the 25% reduction anticipated by the Maryland Commission on Climate Change. Page 40 of MDOT's annual attainment report has a bar graph that cuts through a lot of obfuscation.

Ironically, Maryland will probably meet not only the 2020 target for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, but also the additional 15% reduction mandated by the 2016 version of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act. You may think that electric vehicles will be a big part of the reason, but I am thinking more in terms of the slowdown in the economy that will come about when the central banks have lost all control of the financial system. The Great Recession had the salutary effect of lowering GHG emissions. It appears that nature has a different view of goodness than the majority of humans, at least as measured by the greenhouse effect. While many will see the collapse of the financial system (coming soon to an economy near you) as a catastrophe, take comfort in the thought that it may also be the salvation of the world.

Lassoing Lake Lariat

It's hard to believe that the tiny floating tufts of vegetation in the photo here are capable of doing the work of about an acre of wetland shoreline in cleaning up pollution in a lake. These are artificial floating islands mimicking those in northern lakes. They actually do a great job in reducing nutrient and other pollution in Lake Lariat, Maryland. Since Lake Lariat covers 90 acres, a 90:1 ratio of wetland buffer to water surface seems like it wouldn't make that much difference, but the lake was significantly less polluted a year after these floating islands were introduced. 

Two small man-made floating islands are just off the point on the left.

The technology for these floating islands is described on the Maryland distributor's website. They employ a proprietary soil mix, which I can't help but wonder if it could be further enhanced by including biochar. Cycling of pollutants is principally through all the slime that accumulates on the plastic fibers and submerged roots of plants growing on the platform. 

The Lake Preservation Committee was interested in getting more of these islands, last I heard. With the latest blue-green algae bloom episode, we need to, but proactive measures to reduce runoff and seepage from septic systems would be necessary to eliminate the problem altogether. If we target a buffer zone of 1000 feet all around the lake, our campaign would probably include that many homes. I think cleaning up a lake is even more vital than cleaning up a major tidal waterbody, such as the Chesapeake Bay. For one thing, this lake flows through a dam into a bay tributary, so it is a point source of pollution. Another thing is that people living and playing in and around the lake are subjected to more risk because pollutants accumulate there, are confined to a much smaller volume, and may seep into aquifers.

Since all of Maryland's 100 lakes are man-made, using man-made islands to bring balance to those ecosystems seems like a natural fit. They can have other purposes, as well, including creating a causeway, artificial shorelines, hunting blinds, and biogas supplies. My own idea is to park them near the waterfront of property owned by anyone who balks at repairing a failed septic system and put warning signs to swimmers and fisherfolk to avoid that part of the lake. I hope it never has to come to that.

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.

Anti-Septic Solutions

Clivus (pronounced "cleevus") Multrum toilets are a brand of composting toilets that have received the "best available technology" (BAT) designation in Maryland, which means they could be used as alternatives to septic tanks if combined with greywater systems on new construction. They could also allow reduction of septic tank sizes by 30% when installed without a greywater system. If folks want to bypass the 5-year recurring requirement for a groundwater discharge permit, they might try using the composted urine from the toilet as a nitrogen booster to compost high carbon material in a separate long-term, thermogenic compost pile. One drawback to this and other types of waterless toilets that require a vent fan is that you might want to include a backup source of power to keep the fan running during power outages. Another is that it may cost you more to heat and/or cool your home due to the continuous venting through the toilet.

All of this is particularly relevant to someone who has a home in the critical area (within 1,000 feet of a tidal waterbody or wetland) in Maryland. Structures outside the critical area will probably not be subjected to the expense of a change to their septic system, now that Gov. Hogan has announced a turnabout on the mandate for denitrifying septic systems. Homeowners who must still upgrade could take the Multrum toilet/greywater route, though it is not clear whether regulations would still require them to own a septic system and if it would still need to be upgraded. The new tack being taken by the Hogan administration may favor the composting toilet/greywater system option in lieu of costly septic system upgrades. One person I know with a house in the critical area told me his septic system would cost him $20K to upgrade due to the very deep leach field it requires.

The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) does not condone the use of compost that is harvested from composting toilets and says that it should be bagged and sent to landfills. There are no laws that specifically prohibit use of this compost on one's own property, though the low composting temperature of Clivus Multrum toilets means that owners should limit the compost use to ornamentals (roundworms being a possibility, and all).

What MDE and the general public need to wrap their minds around is that we must get comfortable with humanure composting. Once you get into compost gardening, you start to realize how valuable and scarce compost is. Compost is also valuable outside of gardening. We are not going to be able to continue the highly polluting practice of synthetic fertilizer production from natural gas if we want to keep from burning up the planet. Christophe Pelletier lays it out for us in economic terms,

In the future, we are going to see a new look at fertilization. The economics of agriculture will change. This is inevitable, because the cost of inputs will increase. This will be a direct consequence of the increase of the price of oil, and of the depletion of phosphates reserves. This change of economics will drive renewed interest for manure, and for sewage. These sources will become attractive and competitive, as they contain large amounts of minerals directly available. Because of their nature, they have a high content of organic matter. One of the most efficient ways to remove nitrates from water is to grow plants with it. One of the main sources of phosphates will be manure.

Now, if manure is going to be so important to growing food in the future, let's not rule out humanure until after a thorough investigation of its appropriateness.

Pelletier weighs the value of manure against the future cost of synthetic fertilizer, but the carbon cost could also be factored in. Compost, in general, can be helpful in reducing greenhouse gasses. The points made by the U.S. Composting Council could be easily extended to include humanure compost.

If the least expensive and most effective method (using a bucket and manually adding your scat to a compost pile) seems too undignified or time-consuming, composting toilets are another option better than sticking with the sewer or septic systems that are currently harming our environment. In Maryland, we are fortunate to have an authorized distributor of Clivus Multrum toilets with plentiful experience.

Compost Fit for a Prince

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.

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.

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.