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DEDICATED TO FREE THOUGHT AND FREE SPEECH IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD |
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Finding things that could help Lake County become a better place to live as well as a better place to visit is no easy task. Living here is very hard in large part to the low pay scale that most businesses seem to pay. You can't eat the the beautiful scenery or pay your mortgage with the clean air. So it seems to bring more meth labs and puts more people on welfare creating an incubator for drugs, drunks, and parolees. Even with a full time job I still qualify for food stamps. What a life.
The kids all complaining about nothing to do, 10 days after our son graduated from Kelseyville High he moved to Santa Rosa and 2 years later he has never returned not even for a visit. When I was a kid they had a community center that had indoor basketball courts ping pong tables pool tables, they held field trips to ball games they had dances on special occasions like Halloween and Valentines day barbeques and potluck dinners and these events were open to everybody not just one school or one neighborhood they helped raise money for the various events and to buy or replace equipment and it was built in conjunction with the fire station so the firemen ran the place. Next door was the library that was open 7 days a week till 10 at night.
Now some towns like Santa Monica have taken something as simple as the fact that they are on the ocean and they built a giant pier with places to fish from benches to sit and enjoy the sun and people watching, bait stands, food vendors, coffee carts, roving musicians, swimming it's a great place to visit and people from all over the world go there It's world famous. How difficult could that be, maybe a water slide or a diving area underwater observation platform? Well I probably answered that question my self if you want to play in the water pay At Water World or rent a jet ski or pay for a boat ride on the Queen.
Having such a large body of water why are there no fisheries or any aqua culture operations? Are any of the fiber optic lines that run through the county available to someone who might want to use them like someone in the growing hi tech industry? Why is it that we seem to be modeling ourselves after suburbia and sprawl and not enhancing our main street friendly point of view? How many people here have eaten at a restaurant where they serve the food family style big long tables where you have no choice but to talk to the people on either side or across from you, talk about getting to know people its not like the drive thru at Jack in the Box.
If I'm wrong about any of this please let me know or if you have any more ideas do the same.
This is a story that the Record-Bee printed a small portion of and was found in its entirety in a small paper in Oakdale Ca. Tiny plant could help towns with aging wastewater treatment systems
By GARY D. ROBERTSON
SNOW HILL, N.C. - Paul Skillicorn spreads the root and tiny green
leaves of one of the world's smallest flowering plants, which he
thinks may be the answer to problem hog lagoons and aging wastewater
treatment systems.
"This duckweed is a living mat for organisms," Skillicorn said as an
inchworm wiggled in his hand through fronds the size of a needle's
eye.
Skillicorn, who spent nearly a decade teaching Third World
communities how to harvest duckweed for a profit, says the plants
absorb pollution-causing nutrients from waste. The plants then can be
harvested, dried and made into pellets for animal feed.
The swine industry has shown lukewarm interest so far in Skillicorn's ideas, although he has a makeshift duckweed system at one hog farm in Greene County, about 60 miles east of Raleigh. The Greene County town of Hookerton, faced with a $2 million price tag to pipe its waste 10 miles to Snow Hill, wants to test it.While obstacles remain, a $790,000 state grant is waiting for Hookerton to become the first municipality in North Carolina to become reliant on a duckweed system.
Skillicorn says the future of small towns can hinge on wastewater
capacity. Without room for expansion, development won't happen.
Laurel, Del., a town of 3,800, added a duckweed finishing pond to its
three-lagoon system because of a high algae concentration. Pollution
levels are down, and the duckweed is harvested and made available to
all residents as compost.
"It's done a pretty good job, although it's been a little more work
than what we thought at times," said Al Adkins, Laurel's public works
supervisor.
Hookerton's three-lagoon system, similar to Laurel's, becomes less efficient in killing algae and bacteria when lagoons grow warmer in the summer, and it has paid the price.
The town was fined $3,689 by the state for violating pollution limits at Contentnea Creek in the early 1990s and $3,000 last year, according to state regulators. Since January 1999, it has been operating under a special monitoring pact with the state.
Then Hookerton officials heard about Skillicorn, who moved here in 1998 after setting up duckweed-based wastewater treatment systems in Bangladesh and Peru for a decade through a nonprofit organization. He hopes to make a living with his firm, The Duckweed Co.
"I was looking for a place with intensive animal operations, so I thought, 'Why not come to North Carolina? said Skillicorn, an Australia native who is now an American citizen.
Skillicorn recommended that Hookerton install 26 greenhouses, each 100-feet-by-15 feet. Untreated waste from the first lagoon would enter the greenhouses, where duckweed would feed off nutrients in the waste, growing rapidly. Nutrients dumped into rivers and streams generate algae blooms that rob waters of oxygen, hurting plant and animal life. Under Skillicorn's plan, duckweed would break down the nutrients while removing those pollutants from the water.
Workers would harvest duckweed daily and take it to a farm to dry out, in the process killing any pathogens that remain. The resulting olive-green material would be sold to feed operators for livestock.
"What we've got is the same kind of protein levels as the soybean
has," Skillicorn said as he handled some dried duckweed on a
2,000-head hog farm in Snow Hill, where he set up a greenhouse to
treat hog waste.
He said the duckweed system would reduce nitrogen levels in the raw
waste Hookerton discharges into Contentnea Creek - from 3.6 pounds
per day to 1 pound. The amount of fecal coliform would be cut by 75
percent.
Administrative costs would be about $30,000 a year, and the
capital cost would be a third the cost of piping Hookerton's waste to
Snow Hill, Skillicorn said.
Skillicorn said duckweed could become an option for dozens of North
Carolina towns with aging treatment systems that violate state
pollution controls. Many face tough financial times should they hook
up to a larger system.
Some state regulators are skeptical of duckweed's effectiveness.
A state Division of Water Quality official who reviewed the project
for the state Clean Water Management Trust Fund said duckweed would
"offer little, if any, improvement" over simply installing additional
filters.
State environmental secretary Bill Holman said duckweed might be
Hookerton's best option, given the high cost of tying into a regional
system.
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On the Net: http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/
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