A Developer's Failure to Envelope

From the perspective of a Watershed Steward, developers are inherently the enemy. After all, the Watershed Steward begins an assessment of a site or neighborhood with an eye toward compensating for all the impervious surfaces laid upon the landscape by developers and road builders. Regulations are in place to mitigate soil disturbance and construction of impervious surfaces, but you get what you inspect, not what you "expect." Even after the regulators are done inspecting, there are always runoff and drainage problems that need additional attention by owners or local officials.

The problems are not always easy to spot, even by inspectors. So it was with the new development near our community that sends all its runoff into Lake Lariat. When the Chairman of the Lakes Preservation Committee and I hooked up last winter to see if this project was taking all the necessary measures to prevent runoff from their site, everything looked tidy until we reached the furthest piece of acreage. In a slushy drizzle, I nearly lost one of my knee high rubber boots in the exposed mud making my way out to have a look at the most remote drainage outlet. There, it turned out, a breach of the multi-layer sediment controls had occurred, allowing sedimented runoff to wash out into the nearby stream, and from there, into the lake. (This was also the day that my iPhone 4 bought the farm from being exposed to a pocketful of water in my newly purchased, quickly torn rainsuit, leaving me - to this day- without my own cell phone). No photos were taken of the breach, and I was the only one to witness it.

Notifications were made. The President of the company responsible, Marrick Homes, made visits and said things were corrected. Another heavy precipitation event occurred and the sediment once again poured into the stream leading to the lake. The state inspector confirmed that violations had occurred and reported it. When the Marrick President paid a visit to our lake preservation committee, he owned up to responsibility for the problems. Easy for him to say. No fines had been imposed, in spite of the fact that Marrick's contractor on site failed to self-inspect their controls, as required, and report breaches.

The sad thing is that Marrick has a reputation of being good at the environmental aspects of their trade. You will still need to convince me of that, but if other developers/builders are so negligent, I think the Watershed Stewards' characterization of them as "the enemy" is on target.

A Necessary Disruption

The tariffs on steel and aluminum just enacted by Trump as a protectionist move, are only the first step in what could be a helpful set of new trade restrictions on carbon-intensive products. They are also the first step in what could become the re-invigoration (however short-lived) of the U.S. manufacturing sector. It may not take a deliberate strategy to limit imports for these two lines of dominos to fall. Trade wars sparked by the steel tariffs leading to reciprocal tariffs in a tit-for-tat exchange could be just what we need to end America's global overreach and reduce the carbon footprint of our consumption.

All the backlash at home over the tariffs is not so much over the added cost of consumer products in the U.S., but over the risk that imposing tariffs puts on economic growth should it spark trade wars. (A trade war with China is driven more by moves soon coming out of the U.S. investigation into that country's intellectual property violations.) There would ensue recessions in the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan. As long as shooting wars are avoided, this, too, would be helpful. We need to cease our exploitation of planet Earth. A zero growth economy would be more sustainable than what we have, but considerable diminishment is needed first, in order to return us from our current overshot condition.

If military conflicts arise out of Trump's protectionist moves, we have it coming to us, the way we forced ourselves on countries like Japan when they were contentedly isolated until Admiral Perry showed up. Yet the rise of globalism could now be running in reverse. The tide may have turned, making isolationism the new ideal. Brexit was the start. Ultimately, not only could nativism predominate, but localism. Such an arrangement would be more resilient, if less intermittently harmonious, than that of the past couple of centuries. This is precisely what we need in order for human inhabitants to abide the climate catastrophes approaching.

Buying Time

When you hear the name, "Doomsday Clock," of the gauge used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to warn that the end is nigh, it leads you to think that these scientists are doomers. Scientists are actually some of the most optimistic people. The Scientists are using the clock to show how modern civilization is flirting with widespread disaster and permanent collapse. The latest developments put our risk as high as it has ever been.

What the doomsday clock is purporting to show is that we are not doomed (yet). Were the clock to ever reach midnight, we would be. The clock currently tells us that we are nearing the brink, but climate change can still be reversed in time and  nations can still control the nuclear genie. James Anderson, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at Harvard who earned his stripes by pointing out how chlorofluorocarbons were depleting the ozone layer, tells us that there is much less time than we would like to believe.

According to Anderson, the Arctic ice cap is on pace to melt entirely by 2023. When that goes, the permafrost will melt, a tipping point which is not included in IPCC models. As the Greenland ice sheet slides into the ocean, sea level rises 23 feet. Anderson maintains that stopping greenhouse gas emissions is not by itself enough to prevent these near-term changes to Earth's systems. He calls for an all out effort to direct resources toward drawing down atmospheric carbon with some added geoengineering in the form of deflecting sunlight from the poles.

Let governments and institutions do what they will. I doubt they will transform industry as quickly as Professor Anderson says is needed. For those of my generation who are retired, who are not involved in the major muscle movements to end fossil fuel use and draw down carbon, I encourage you to learn how to make and use biochar. It's catching fire around the world and may be one thing that buys the world more time to realize its predicament and make decisions that will allow humankind to continue to dwell upon the earth.

Sounding Off in Desperation

Let's give this another go. Editing the International Biochar Initiative Newsletter, including a monthly summary of new research, has edged blogging out of my schedule of late, but I plan to reapply myself to posting regularly, becoming a writer again, rather than just an editor.

With a new title more descriptive of this blog's emergent zeitgeist, a new layout, and increased realization of how the world works, I plan to continue opining on developments from the perspective of my own (mostly potential) involvement. To be more specific about my involvement, of the 231 posts I have written, I can claim only one (dealing with my small scale biochar production) to be substantially realized in practice. Sixty-six posts deal with matters that I have not attended to in the least. The other 164 posts have received some attention, but still require much more.

A variation of Murphy's Law that I have subscribed to most of my life is that if anything can go wrong, it will, but the inevitability of such an occurrence diminishes significantly if you do something to prevent it. Even awareness of problems and needed improvements counts to some degree - taking the issues out of the unknown-unknown category. So I have 66 known-unknowns and 165 known-somewhat knowns now that still could use additional action. Those that I will concentrate on personally will come from the 66 in which I am most remiss.

Then there are the unknown-unknowns. These will hopefully be discovered in time as this blog continues meandering, albeit more desperately, in search of giving us a better chance.

Paying the Piper

The amount of sediment that is allowed to runoff into the Chesapeake Bay is forty times by weight the amount of nitrogen and 500 times the amount of phosphorus allowed. Now that the Conowingo Dam is silted to the point that scoured sediment is washing through, it will become harder to meet the decreasing sediment limits without dredging. However, the real problem is phosphorus since the sediment contains much more than a 1:500 ratio. Who will pay for the dredging?

Exelon, which operates the power generating station at Conowingo, will benefit from dredging due to less wear and tear on their hydraulic turbines and improved output. Environmentalists have estimated that Exelon could afford to fund dredging at $27 to $44 million per year out of revenues from selling hydroelectricity.  Yet, Exelon did not cause the problem. The dam didn't cause the sediment to flow into the river. It was allowed to run off by poor land management practices. Some silting does occur naturally, but the lack of attention to stormwater management and soil conservation is largely to blame for the rate of buildup. Maryland is taking on the job of dredging, but Pennsylvania should be the ones paying for it. Pennsylvania loses twice as much sediment to the Chesapeake Bay watershed as Maryland. They are not on track to meet their 2017 TMDL target for sediment and have not even committed to doing so.

Just the 25,000 cu. yd. dredging (representing 1% of the total targeted for removal) in the pending demonstration project entails removing 80 million lbs. of sediment. To stop the buildup in Conowingo Reservoir and carryover into the bay, removal would have to proceed at nearly 30 times that rate, i.e. the annual total sediment flow for Pennsylvania (2.4 billion lbs). Should dredging stop after reaching the target amount, the reservoir will refill in a few years.

Pennsylvania cannot be expected to eliminate all of their sediment runoff. Their target is 1.945 billion lbs. of sediment flow per year by 2025, which would equate to about a 55 million lb. per year annual reduction. This means that interstate nutrient trading would not begin to pay for the 8 billion lbs. of  dredging necessary to correct the problem.

Once we dredge Conowingo Reservoir (and I'm afraid Marylanders will be stuck with the bill) , there are two other dams upstream that have the same problem. Pennsylvania should work on those, too. Exelon's bid for a new 46-year lease to run the hydroelectric station should be rejected unless they offer to foot the dredging bills (not to exceed $44 million/yr) as long as they hold the lease. If they do not, as soon as dredging is substantially complete, perhaps we should prepare to dismantle each of these dams. It would ultimately restore the lower Susquehanna River and ensure that we do not have to keep paying the piper.

Anchara

If phragmites australis were to be charred under a cover of dredge spoils, the affected area could be immediately nitrogen-deficient due to the loss of N gas in the exhaust. Dredge material from upstream of the Conowingo Dam is nitrogen-rich, however, and the underlying soil would also contain great amounts of nitrogen which could wash up into the biochar. The heat of charring could even create microsites of char from the organic matter mixed in with the dredge spoils.

Nitrogen that was held in the reeds and added organic matter could be entrapped by the sediment casing, making it available when subsequent planting takes place (as with ankara practiced in Cameroon). Nitrogen that is trapped in the sediment cover or char due to an increase of reactive sites on clay or biochar could be sequestered, avoiding the greenhouse gas release or eutrophication that would accompany simply dumping of the spoils on the shore. Inoculating seedling roots with mycorrhizal fungi would be a very helpful step. If native legumes or other nitrogen-fixing species can be found, planting their seedlings preceded by a dip in the proper bacterial inoculum could be all it takes to jump start the nitrogen cycle after charring. Plants that are easy to grow would be necessary in any case, since the soil would be otherwise devoid of microbes. The roots should be placed no deeper than the baked sediment layer, though the underlying baked sediment should be broken up to allow the roots to grow into the charred phragmites layer.

One currently followed method of phragmites eradication is described in this brochure and a more interesting slideshow. It may be less expensive than my method, but it is potentially more harmful to the environment (glyphosate) and takes two years to reach the point of replanting or initial restoration. My method can be performed in a matter of weeks and it sequesters carbon while recycling dredge spoils. Since applying glyphosate must be done in a way that avoids overspray and contacts all the targeted foliage, current methods may also be more labor intensive (adding expense) and pose a health hazard to the exterminators.

Another common method of eradicating phragmites involves burning in addition to herbicides. This video shows what a good tinder phragmites is. My covered method would be more controlled and hopefully much less smoky.

Demonstration Projects

Though installing rock dams at the outfalls to my local lake will require a lot of preparing, planning, organizing, and coordinating, my higher ambition involves another dam, also affecting the Chesapeake Bay, but to a much greater extent. Tomorrow the Maryland Environmental Service (MES) will begin evaluating bids for the contract competition to dredge 25,000 cubic yards of sediment from the Maryland portion of the Susquehanna River upstream of the Conowingo Dam and recycling the dredge spoils in an innovative fashion. The idea is to select a company that offers a promising plan for disposal of 1,000 times this much sediment by using this contract as a demonstration of how it can be accomplished on a small scale.

Conowingo Dam photo by Aaron Harrington

I am not in the dredging business, but the amount of dredge spoils requiring disposal from this dam  could be an ideal opportunity for me to try my idea for phragmites eradication. A successful small scale grant-funded demonstration would be a good way to gain the interest of MES and whichever compan(ies) they eventually award contract(s) totalling $3 billion. Before I even seek a grant,  backyard experimentation with charring under earth and/or sediment cover would be a good first step. Once I finish building my cob oven, I will be able to practice a few techniques, but will eventually want to replicate charring of dry grasses using a configuration like that in my eradication concept.

On top of that, following a year of training and practice, I am happy to report that tonight I got my certificate naming me a Master Watershed Steward. And I got the t-shirt. That oughta make 'em sit up and pay attention to my ideas on saving the bay.