Part 3- Fixing the Dead Zones

Current approaches

So far we have established that Dead Zones exist, are not desirable, and are primarily caused by by a variety of pollution inputs into our river systems. So what are we (all of us) doing about it.

The sad truth is that currently, absolutely nothing is being done about it directly. Like many of the problems facing our environment, all of the money being spent on this issue is being spent to raise awareness, doing research on the problem itself (in terms of is it a problem, how big of a problem is it…), and publishing propaganda that attempts to cajole people into acting against their own interests to solve it.

For example, the two biggest sources of nutrient pollution are lawn maintenance and industrial farming. We can’t give up our food supply, currently our technology cannot feed the world without the industrial model that we all love to hate, and the market isn’t ready to adopt the changes needed to fix it. As for lawn maintenance, well I am not gonna go too far down that path other than to say that people are addicted to growing ugly and unsustainable lawns instead of letting nature flourish.

The sum of that paragraph is that we are stuck with these two sources of nutrient pollution for the short and medium term. Based on peoples response to my yard weeds, I think it will be for the long term as well.

So, we have to look at ways to clean it up. What is the current method?

There really isn’t one. Sure, water treatment plants exist. The problem there is they are primarily used to clean water entering the river system, and don’t impact run off at all. Even if they did, they are expensive to operate and overburdened due to the cost of running them.

To make matters worse, our incessant desire for more and more sterile land drives us to destroy the wetlands, marshes, and swamps that naturally clean up this waste.

Being that I am a big fan of Bill Mollison and his Permaculture designs, my first choice would be to redesign our entire society around natural processes instead of trying to bend nature to us. Since that is not popular enough to be practical, I think the solution may be to design systems that mimic those natural processes instead of or maybe in addition to the current filtering treatment plants.

In fact, my idea comes directly from lessons I learned while studying permaculture and other food systems. The system is entirely based on a proven plant production system that harvests waste to create new products. So instead of creating expenses while cleaning the river, we will be creating marketable products. That is plural. I have identified hundreds of potential products that can be profitably manufactured (at various levels) through this system.

So instead of cajoling people into doing things against their own interests, we can use the market to clean up this mess, and let the markets take their time with fixing our industrial food production and lawn addictions. In the next article I will give the broad strokes of the system and start to outline the individual components so that we can talk about options on expanding it after.