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.

The Blue-Green Waters of Lake Lariat

My approach to finding a good inspector for my septic system has resulted in disappointment. In my area, all of the inspectors on the state's list are not in the business anymore, not available at their listed number, or decided to ignore the training they got in order to do their inspections cheaply.

One of the people I called lives in my neighborhood, but never offered inspections. His name got on the list because he used to work for the county in some capacity dealing with sanitation and had taken the inspector training decades ago. It turned out I knew him from some events we had worked together in our community. I also saw him out on his run this morning - not unusual for this geriatric trackster.

Though my friend couldn't inspect my septic system, we continued to converse and he mentioned that the Lake (Lariat) Preservation Committee, which he serves on, had been considering soliciting residents along the lakeshore to have their septic systems inspected for a highly discounted group rate of $180. The inspection company offering the deal has a camera probe which would be one way to properly inspect components downstream of the tank.

Lake Lariat Beach - it's empty for a reason

The Lake Preservation Committee is interested in checking septic systems which could be contributing to a recent blue-green algal bloom of unknown origin. These blooms are associated with a bacteria that can harm the liver, so signs have been posted recently to discourage swimming.

This problem may be my opportunity - not only to tackle it as a part of my Watershed Steward Academy capstone project, but also to hire a well-equipped inspector for my own system. I don't know if the Lake Preservation Committee considered soliciting homeowners not on the lake to join in the deal, but I would open it up to as many homes in the community that want their system tested, with priority to those homes in the "critical area" of the Lake Lariat watershed. At the 14 September Lake Preservation Committee meeting, I will talk this up and try to get them to leverage SepticSmart week as an outreach platform.

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.

September is for Septic Systems

Though I am a septic skeptic, I still depend on my septic system and want to become a responsible system owner even as I wean us off the practice of dumping in our drinking water. I want to encourage others to be responsible septic system owners, too, so I will do what I can to put together an awareness-raising drive with the help of materials in the toolkit provided by the EPA for septic-smart week (Sept. 19 - 23). At least I can put up some posters; maybe do some door-to-door handouts, making initial contact with homeowners who may be good candidates for conversion to humanure composting.

One thing I've never done that the EPA recommends is hire an inspector every three years to see if my septic system is developing problems. Since I have violated several other guidelines over my 11 years of ownership pertaining to protecting the integrity of my system, I may actually have a failed or failing system and not even know it. Most homeowners are probably in the same boat, not even thinking of having an inspection done until it's time to sell. An inspection now may be timely for us in that regard, as well.

Just looking into the topic of septic systems has given me some other useful awareness. I was planning to plant some shrubs over my drain field, and now, having learned better, I'm looking forward to planting self-seeding annual flowers there instead. There might also be a good area near the end of the drain field for my humanure compost bins. If that somehow negatively affects the capacity of the septic system, the reduced load in the tank may be enough to compensate.

The #1 Source of Pollution in Our Watershed

The 7 million or so gallons of sewage that spilled from wastewater treatment plants into a couple of the Chesapeake Bay's tributaries two weeks ago turned my head in a new direction. It redirected me on my capstone project for the Watershed Stewards Academy to focus on humanure in my neighborhood. Septic tanks are the current locus of the problem. Particularly problematic are failed septic systems in which sewage resurfaces and then gets washed by storm runoff into surface water.

The environmental impact of failed septic systems can be estimated using a figure from Purdue University stating that one failed system will discharge 76,650 gallons of sewage to the surface in one year. Extending that to an estimate of the number of homes in the critical area of the Chesapeake Ranch Estates, and applying a factor of 10%, which is the EPA's estimate of the proportion of septic system failures, and the annual amount of sewage flowing overland from this 1,000 foot wide zone stretching about 1 mile along the Chesapeake Bay comes to 3.8 million gallons. It could be double or triple that, depending on the actual failure rate, which has be estimated at over 30% in some states. Project that kind of problem all along the coastline of the bay and its tributaries and the wastewater treatment plants end up smelling like a rose.

Maryland's laws pertaining to poop aren't all that stringent. Farmers are allowed to dump manure on their fields. Homeowners are allowed to spread it on their lawns. If the fertilizer limits on nitrogen are applied to manure (phosphorus is actually the more limiting element), you could legally put 40 pounds of horse manure on a 1,000 sq. ft. lawn in a single application. Not that anyone would, but you could instead apply 20 pounds of humanure to the same lawn and remain under the nitrogen limits. A failed septic system used by a family of four would expel roughly 700 pounds of excrement (assuming toilets outside the home are used 50% of the time) to the land. That amounts to over 35 times the nitrogen limit for lawn fertilization (humanure contains 5% - 7% N). And that's just the poo! There is also a lot of urine and other nasty liquids in the mix with a whole lot more nitrogen.

It is hard to say whether the nutrient-laden runoff or the 100 or so pathogens in the sewage are a greater problem. Research published in 2015 from leading experts in the field of water sustainability shows that pathogens from septic systems make it into surface water much more than what authorities had believed. The pathogens are pretty scary, but to fish and other marine life, nutrient overload can quickly become deadly.

Keep in mind that all septic systems, working or not, tend to pollute the environment. The total amount of nitrogen loading to the Chesapeake Bay watershed from septic systems in Calvert County exceeds that from every other category,

Photo by Jim Barter

which includes agriculture, urban runoff, forests, and wastewater treatment plants. On average, the amount of nitrogen entering the watershed from a septic system is 19 pounds per year, based on calculations using figures from the Calvert County Watershed Implementation Plan. That is equivalent to dumping lawn fertilizer for over twenty 1,000 sq. ft. applications straight into the bay.  Every house.  Every year. The pathogens (including certain bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and other parasites)  in the effluent from working septic systems also make it into groundwater to one degree or another. In areas where septic systems are greatly concentrated, such as the Chesapeake Ranch Estates, both pollutant types will make the surrounding waters inhospitable to man or beast.

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.