Water quality/water pollution.

 

There are many causes of water pollution in the watershed. Everything eventually gets into the water system. Some of these are known and documented such as the wood preservatives in Bessette Creek (near Lumby)Water quality Bessette Creek report and map http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wat/wq/objectives/bessette/bessette.html. Others are sewage human and dairy, reagarless of “treatment”. None of these are positive for the watershed and do not have to happen if better systems are used.

Most sewage systems use chlorine that also ends up in the river. There is no need to use this kind of system. Biological systems have been used for years in many parts of North America. Why aren’t they used here, in our watershed? Think what a difference that would make to water quality.

Biological systems are based on ecology. A first system was designed by research biologist (a Canadian) under the name of Ocean Arks International. It first designed efficient water transport and then a wastewater treatment facility based on using biological systems for a ski resort in Vermont (0 degrees temperatures, limited sun). This eliminated the use of chlorine. The system uses “the natural purifying powers of aquatic ecosystem” which result in “a high-quality, advanced treatment effluent”. The system does not separate solids from liquids in the “waste” water. It works using sunlight and photosynthesis as the primary energy source. This same process was applied to septage (concentrated sewage) lagoons. The system is called an “eco-machine” although it was not really mechanical but used only plants. Many nasty chemicals, such as “volatile organic compounds” were removed. They demonstrated that they could “devise systems to cope with some of the worst pollution problems facing humanity.”

These systems “are engineered according to the same design principles found in nature to build and regulate the ecology of forests, lakes, prairies, or estuaries. Like the planet they have hydrological and mineral cycles. They are, however totally new contained environments”.

Organisms are collected from the field for these contained ecosystems and are subsequently reassembled for specific purposes. Their part or living components can come from almost any region and be recombined in new ways. They are fundamentally different from conventional machines or biotechnologies. They represent, in essence, the intelligence of the forest or the lake reapplied to human ends. Like the forest or lake, their primary source of power is the sun. Like natural ecosystems they have the capability of self-design. They rely on biotic diversity for self-repair and protection, and for overall system efficiency. Their metabolism involves such independent qualities of life forms as replication, feeding, and waste excretion in dynamic balance with interdependent functions like gas, mineral, and nutrient exchanges. The potential contributions of such ecological engines to the twenty-first century are portentous. They require only one time use of fossil fuels in manufacture. They reintegrate wastes into large systems and bread down toxic materials or, in the case of metals, lock them up in long cycles. They have the potential to help feed people year round, especially in urban areas. Widespread implementation  of these living technologies could release natural systems for bondage. By miniaturizing the foot print of essential human services they would return wild nature to its own devices and allow the restoration of large tracts of wilderness.”

Here is a link that shows these eco-machines, water treatment systems.

http://www.toddecological.com/eco-machines/

Summarized and quoted from Nancy Jack Todd, A Safe and Sustainable World, the promise of ecological design, p.168