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  • From: Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] sewage systems
  • Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:20:15 -0500

In my Permaculture Design Course, we learned about, but did not build, constructed wetlands, rock and reed structures where plants feed on human "waste" and the water coming out is cleaner than what comes out of the tap in your kitchen. Santa Rosa, CA built a system like you're talking about, Ken, basically a swamp, and it works so good that it scares the workers at the water treatment plant who are really not necessary. The guy who took us on the tour through the plant said that. But they've spent a ton of money to build the plant that services several towns on the Santa Rosa Plain and the people who work there are politically astute, by necessity, so they have both systems operating, side by side. One's free, and one costs a ton of money to operate. They build pipelines all over the place to use up the treated water because putting too much of it into the Laguna de Santa Rosa and the Russian River makes the wildlife sick, whereas the biosystem puts out healthy water. In "Sol Viva!," Anna Edey talks about flushing her house toilet into a worm-filled box of soil and having the water come out clean. John Todd has made a big dent in things with Living Machines (www.livingmachines.com). The site is wonderfully informative.

In Sebastopol, CA they are killing their heritage valley oaks by spraying so much treated water on the land that their root structures never dry out, and no one figured out what's killing them. In a class called "Sacred Trees" at New College in Santa Rosa, we had to learn to listen to trees, and, weird as it seemed to begin with, it was even more weird when I got willing and it started happening. Now I hear them all the time. It makes me crazy sometimes to see the things people do to heritage trees like those valley oaks on the Santa Rosa Plain, six, seven hundred year old trees dying from human ignorance. But trying to tell folks hasn't worked yet, for me. It's really hard for me to go to college on campuses where there are a few terminally lonely trees missing the forests of their "society" because I hear their moans. One Horticulture professor could hear them, too, but didn't advertise it. It was a blessing to be understood.

Smiles.
Tommy

On 6/7/10 3:51 PM, pbunch@cox.net wrote:
How does this bio system work?

---- Ken Hargesheimer<minifarms2@yahoo.com> wrote:
That 2,000 is nothing compared to what it would be doing. Raises cotton now.
We pay 100 of thousands of dollars each year to maintain the chemical
processing of sewage. The water from the bio system is drinkable. Please do
your homework on this.
Ken

--- On Mon, 6/7/10, Emery Mitchamore<emitch@att.net> wrote:


From: Emery Mitchamore<emitch@att.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] sewage systems
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"<livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Monday, June 7, 2010, 8:52 AM


2,000 acres is a lot of land! Can it be used for anything else? Like
raising switchgrass or cattails for biofuel? Solar or wind farm? Does it
produce compost for horticultural uses? Can the effluent be used for
irrigation, catfish farming or municipal water? If all it does is process
sewage, I can understand the skepticism. Surely the proposal can be
sweetened with more functionality.


E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.net





On Jun 7, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Ken Hargesheimer wrote:






Several years ago when Lubbock was going to construct a new sewage system, I
tried to get the city to construct a bioligical system. At that time it
would have taken about 2,000 acres of land. Many cities around the world use
it. Proven system. The consulant would not even consider it, of course.
Water leaving the system is drinkable it is so pure. Cost of operating it is
almost nothing.
Ken H



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