permaculture

[Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>]

> From: Claude Genest <genest@together.net>

Thanks, Claude, and that's some interesting news on what's on in Quebec.
I'll surf those sites soon.
And, yes no surprise that it's the bacteria doing the primary work.

I'm still thinking that scoop it up and ditch it is the best approach in the
micro-scale situations I'm looking at. Basically, relatively undisturbed
residential land where the contamination is primarily lead and primarily
from paint, and has a highly variable distribution- primarily right next to
the house where the paint chips fall. The lead is in a thin layer of soil,
and it makes sense, if you're going to re-contour "swale it up", to just can
the contaminated layer as part of that process. It doesn't seem to make
sense to mix it all up,add it to a huge biomass, and then cart it off, when
you can do it in an afternoon in a few lowboy dumpsters for under $500 and
have your re-contouring done at the same time.

The interesting thing about these suburban soils is that one of the common
and more problematic contaminants is the DDT family, since gardeners often
got pretty loose with the stuff- "more is better" Testing for those is more
expensive and I don't yet have a good handle on how to deal with them,
beyond "get fungi and bacteria to work and don't eat off that ground
until???"