Edgewalker's beach blog

part two Water Awareness Journey

2012-01-27T16:32:00.000-08:00

As we sped north towards Shreveport past Cypress stands draped with soft silvery Spanish Moss and more upland stands of oak, tupelo and gum a distant dark plume of smoke rose into the sky. We began passing huge flat fields of stubble. Rice. They're burning off the fields.

Orange flames flickered at the base of the smoke- a hundred black vultures circled and swirled over the highway and a hundred more roosted in the trees beside the huge field. We flashed by the two half mile long lines of flame burning perpendicular to the highway. Each line slowly drew away from the other as it advanced across the field. We felt the heat in our car as we flashed past this apocalyptic hell field with its smoke and blackened charred earth. A bad day for the mice. A good day for the vultures.

I learned from a farm newspaper picked up at a gas station that salt water intrusion now threatens the irrigated rice crop. In a land of fifty plus inches of rain a year, a forty inch rain fall is severe drought and ground water depletion is a real problem. The ag interests are seeking more diversions from the Mississippi. I wonder. How long will it be before we see increased withdrawals from Lake Michigan through the Chicago Canal to water the rice fields?

We rolled north to Shreveport and near that city the first signs of the Haynesville shale gas boom appeared. Well pads, rigs, the distinctive plastic lined open pit lagoons for flowback water began appearing along the roadside. We overhauled a tanker spilling a dribble of water that sprayed onto the road. As we passed the red cab we saw Haliburton on the door. We then overhauled a second tanker, also dumping his load on the road. We did not test the liquid. We don't know for sure it was polluted. But why would a truck dump good water on the highway? As my co- captain observed- one truck, maybe a screw up. But two trucks traveling together?? That's a bit beyond statistical likelihood of simple stupidity or incompetence. That looked an awful lot like standard corporate operating procedure.

Louisiana is a poor and sparsely populated state. It has suffered severely from chemical contamination and oil pollution for decades. It's logical to assume that few people are monitoring the industry and even fewer thank they can change its behavior here. A Google search for environmental websites dealing with shale gas drilling here turned up very little in the way of activist information.

A day and two tanks of gas later the little blue Honda and its crew were passing through the Permian Basin of west Texas. Here for eighty years oil has been extracted. Ten years ago the supply was dwindling and the basin was thought to be nearly sucked dry. Then fracking began. Today industry believes another 30 billion barrels of oil may be 'recovered' from the Permian. Odessa, Midlands, and Monahans are booming 24 -7. The trucks roll constantly, day and night on I 10. The lot in front of the motel we stayed at was full of trucks. More than two thirds had drilling gear or were tankers. On a Sunday morning they were rolling at 7 am. On Saturday I watched ten trucks go by four of which were tankers. An industry publication says it's like another Kuwait has been added right here in the good old USA. “It is almost as if the laws of scarcity have been repealed” gushed the industry observer.

But not for Texas water supplies. It takes seven to nine barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil. And each well may use up to 13 million gallons of water. The drillers get it from ground water. Even as the worst drought ever recorded in the state has shriveled and parched Texas, they are pumping millions of gallons of freshwater into the oil wells and recovering and re using less than a quarter of it. This “unregulated gluttonous use of freshwater” as one Texas newspaper called it, has gotten so bad that Governor Perry signed into law last year a regulation that the drillers reveal the quantity of water used for each well. Pretty amazing considering how friendly Texas generally is to the industry.

The drillers can use brackish water extracted from deeper under the ground. But it costs more and with the supplies of gas and oil on the increase gas prices and profits are dropping. This is not the time to spend more on recycling and cleaning up water. So use it up. Quick before the regulations get put in place. The last few surviving ranchers and farmers can go to work driving trucks. At least until 2020. Then the latest boom will go bust. Actually an industry paper reported on the day I wrote this that a “much needed correction” was in the works as the industry began cutting back on shale gas drilling investments. Will New York's moratorium stand?

We filled up the gas tank again and drove on.

We drove past a dried up orange grove in Arizona and empty pastures in New Mexico. We drove past unused fields whitened and poisoned by irrigation salts. We drove over the Canal that supplies the hay fields of southern California. And we drove over the Rio Grande where I saw one very small puddle fed by a tiny trickle.

Drought and water scarcity, writes William deBuys in his book “A Great Aridness”, are a different sort of “natural” catastrophe. It comes on gradually and grinds away at the economic system built up upon a customary supply. In ancient times New Mexico and Arizona peoples successfully practiced dry land farming for centuries. Then seven hundred years ago the last great drought arrived. The society unraveled. Archaeologists have found large numbers of broken human bones and skulls- broken by human on human violence.

Will forethought and science prevail in this fossil fuel dependent society of today? We have the technology to do it differently. We passed a 250 MW concentrated solar utility plant under construction west of Tucson. We passed a hybrid diesel delivery truck in Louisiana. I walked by a tiny smart car over by the library yesterday. Rain does still fall, at least occasionally. The sun still shines and plants still grow. For now.

water awareness part one

2012-01-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

Our Water Awareness Journey

I'll get back to the pellets and biomass soon. Right now while it's fresh in my mind I want to share observations of a cross country trip where we observed what happens when there is too much and too little water and people have made unwise choices regarding same.

The lake watcher headed west with her co captain and a crew mate from Wolcott a few days ago. Our first destination was the deep south where we became acutely aware of the impacts of too much water. We traveled from Mobile Bay west to the fabled French Quarter of New Orleans which largely escaped the rage of Katrina. Biloxi however did not. I had noticed the occasional groupings of live oaks around weedy plots as we drove the coast highway. When we neared the old gulf city of Biloxi these groupings became more frequent. Broken bleached snags and stumps marked the seaward median strip where once a complimentary row of oaks reached out over the highway to lace branches with the land side trees. We saw large multistory casinos with ripped and tattered siding exposing the steel beams beneath. A bill board touted Slab Removal 1.50 per square foot. We saw concrete street lamp bases still sprouting wires, bent and uprooted fire hydrants, and many many slabs with ragged live oaks and for sale signs usually listing a banking contact. It will be many years before Mississippi recovers from Katrina and its 25 foot storm surge.

Do you think that just maybe the banks might decide not to finance new mansions with waterfront views there?

The vital bustling colorful flavorful raucous French Quarter was largely untouched by Katrina. Humans are a resilient species and they're still busy trading and dealing and selling to the tourists in the Big Easy. We took a mule wagon ride ( mules stand the heat better then horses) with Daryl the guide and Willie providing pull. Before boarding I observed two notices taped to the seat backs. One had a three inch header PETA LIES the second with smaller print outlined the mule welfare guidelines of Willie's employer. He heads back to the barn when it hits 95 degrees. Daryl was a 22 year veteran of the tourism guide biz. He had been with his street wise mule for about 13 years.

Do you know where The Music was born? Not in the French Quarter. It was born in the Treme ( pronounced Trem-may). Daryl told us with pride in his voice. This, I now know, was one of the city's oldest neighborhoods where the free people of color lived. He also told us a well regarded producer had created an HBO series about the area and he had a bit part in one episode as a dancer. Later we had a beer and listened to three young black male musicians and a young white female vocalist wail out the blues. The waiter smiled and thanked me when I put a tip in the muscians' jar. The 99 % are still scrapping and scraping by in New Orleans. They even spare the tourist a smile and a cheery hello now and then.

Katrina largely spared the Lafitte swamp, too, but here we saw the first signs of drought. Crispy brown withered vegetation and dry bare earth lay beneath the tall straight Cypress trees and their knees. One tiny puddle of water under the boardwalk contained a dozen minnows. No alligators to our regret. But the treetops were busy with birds-winter warblers, sparrows, titmice and chickadees with an accent and slightly different plumage than New York black caps.

We stopped at the visitors center to inspect the restrooms and here a volunteer told us the swamp was under the influence of the great southwestern drought. But not to worry. The gaiters find holes, the turtles and fish repopulate, the birds go somewhere. But what the swamp can't deal with is giant Salvinia. This and a trio of other invasive south American plants how rapidly spreading through the bayous are weaving a choking mat of vegetation so thick you can walk on it in some places. You can't hand pull it- it takes a dredge and in five weeks it repopulates. A bit disheartened by this we moved on.

Next hydro fracking and a historic drought in the Permian Basin of west Texas.

pellets fish and clean water

2012-01-11T07:24:00.000-08:00

Pellet stoves happy fish and clean beaches. First in a series

What has a wood burning stove got to do with a less smelly beach? Bear with me. This will take a couple of paragraphs.

Erosion is not good for lakes. When dirt washes off bare land, it often carries antibiotics, persistent pollutant chemicals and endocrine disrupters and pathogenic bacteria with it. If the mud has come from a cornfield or some other land with row crops on it, the runoff frequently carries fertilizers that end up fertilizing algae and rooted weed growth in the lake. Too much nitrate and phosphate pollution from agriculture has caused toxic blue green algae blooms, near shore “dead zones” with no oxygen, and botulism outbreaks that killed thousands of birds on Lake Erie and Ontario. So how are pellet stoves mixed up with this?

Pellet stoves are an increasingly popular way to heat houses in the rural areas of the Great Lakes region. Most use sawdust that has been formed into little cylindrical pellets that look like rabbit chow. In areas with lots of trees, waste sawdust pellets bagged up as fuel are very competitive with propane and heating oil if you have a special stove to burn them in. Northern Europe has modernized pellet stove designs because the fuel burns much cleaner than cordwood. In fact, late last December a bulker loaded with 28,000 tons of pellets left a terminal near Norfolk Virginia for Germany where homes and businesses burn about 1.6 million tons a year. Europe in general is increasing its consumption of pellet fuel and one industry trade group predicts that use could double in eight years from the current 11 million tons to 15 to 25 million tons.

But as clean burning easy to use pellet stoves become popular, the available sawdust supply dwindles. It takes seventy years to grow a decent sized tree. It takes seventy days to grow a field of perennial grasses or golden rod. And native grasses can make fuel pellets too. A hundred years ago people burned hay and straw and dried cow chips out on the tree less prairies. Straw stoves have been around for years in Scandinavia and in rural areas of the U.S. In fact back in the 1870s straw burning steamers were being used on threshing rigs. And people have burned wheat and rye grain in stoves. Back in 1988 when I saw my first pellet stove in Watertown it was burning spoiled corn kernels. So the interest in grass pellets now on the upswing simply continues the long standing practice of getting heat energy from farm crops and waste fiber.

Stay with me for one more paragraph.

Many grasses are perennial plants. They develop huge strong root systems that penetrate deep into the ground. A good hay seeding of perenial grasses that's fertilized regularly can last for at least a decade as the farmer takes off two or three cuttings a year. All that time, the grass holds the soil on the field even as it provides forage for cows, or cover for nesting birds and wildlife. Given ample fertilizer you can produce five tons of biomass per acre in the Lake Ontario watershed. That biomass, like wood, can be turned into pellet fuel and used in heating. At the time I wrote this the retail prices of wood pellets were running 260 to 300 dollars a ton. And it can reduce soil erosion and inputs of fertilizers and chemicals into Lake Ontario too One way it does so is if farmers plant wide buffer strips of grass near streams and creeks to soak up the excess manure they apply to their fields. This keeps the fertilizer out of the water. Planting perennial grasses on steep slopes also keeps that priceless resource we call 'dirt' in place. As Jared Diamond author of the ground breaking book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed points out, history shows repeatedly that when a society loses its topsoil, it can not long endure.

In a press release from a German company announcing construction of a pellet plant in east Texas that will produce 500,000 tons of fuel a year German Pellets says;

“Wood pellets are the fuel of the future. They are produced from the renewable raw material wood, meaning that a sustainable supply is guaranteed. In addition, wood pellets are significantly less expensive than fossil fuels. Pellets are a clean, CO2-neutral fuel, which means they do not contribute to climate change or pollute the environment. “

Possibly. But some folks right here in Ontario and Quebec and upstate NY and Vermont are thinking grass pellets may be the fuel of the future. Our next article will take a look at REAP and Cornell and some other endeavors to create sustainable affordable bio fuel from land that should not be growing corn.

coming next- can cattails contribute to 'energy independence' from the Middle East?

December cattails

2011-12-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

A December Canoe trip thoughts on the amazing cattail and other ecology

Anne Dillard writes that she takes walks to keep an eye on things. So, to check up on the lake on a unexpectedly mild still day of subdued soft sunshine in mid December I went for a short canoe trip along the shore. I pulled out on a patch of gravel and went ashore to inspect a small wetland that we call The Swale. It's mostly full of woody shrubby button bush but here and there a few cattail spikes had managed to establish. Possibly they took root last year when the water levels were low enough to expose more mud than usual in the Swale. A very faint barely detectable south wind was filtering up the length of the brown and gold swamp. The low winter noonday sun back lit the cattail spikes as they spread their seed. The silent flight of countless tiny sparks of life brought all kinds of thoughts profound and otherwise to mind. The fuzzy seed heads shone brightly, like incandescent torches against the dark background as they released streams and clots and clumps of seed. The bits of fluff looked like sparks off a July Fourth sparkler.

How many? A multitude. A vast swarm. A blizzard. An uncountable quantity. A number too great to even consider. Life flowed past me constantly. Some would go on to found dynasties and cattail empires of their own in a ditch or pond somewhere. Most would soon land on the lake's cold placid surface to expire. Strange to think how full of life the air usually is. Pollen grains, tiny seeds. Spider silk, midges, spores and cysts, they're all up there, like the plankton in the Gulf of Maine I once studied. We just don't see all that aerial plankton being sent aloft during the growing season by all sorts of reproductive plant and animal apparatus hard at work distributing new life.

On this mild still winter day the thought of all that life around me unseen was oddly comforting.

When I got back ashore I asked Google how many seeds are in a cattail head. About 300,000. And How many stalks per acre? About 86,000. So a one acre marsh can crank about 25 billion plus potential cattails. I think I'll stop right there with the cattails.

for the rest of the ecology check the log on line at silverwaters.com

all souls day beach

2011-10-31T06:08:00.000-07:00

Halloween , as fall shades into late fall is a time when dim ancestral memories of a more “spirited” time come to mind. These days the season seems to be mostly devoted to candy, plastic pumpkins, inflatable yard decorations, and other consumer based sorts of activities. This is only appropriate and very much in keeping with modern times when foraging and farming have been replaced by shopping as the major human activity in North America. But now and then spirits still stir the awareness as one walks an empty fall beach.

What message were the spirits sending us yesterday as we strolled by a calm lake in the crisp morning air?

I moved the printed message a few feet closer to the lost rubber ball to make the photo a bit more dramatic.(click on the photo to enlarge and read) . Seemed like a good thought as the ghouls and ghosts walk the streets and the divide between life and death thins on the eve of all souls day. This was traditionally a time when the opportunity for contact and communion between the living and the dead was strongest. It's also the time of Mexican folk festivals associated with the Day of the Dead, honoring lost infants and children. And as light levels dim, leaves fall, days shorten and nights grow cold, it does feel like the cold death of winter draws near. The year we knew as 2011 grows old. Soon it will die and the child of 2012 will appear. These darkening days we need to look for and attend to the future. It is coming.

A Woman's Quest

2011-03-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

One Woman's Quest for a better toilet

In honor of World Water Day on March 22 I am publishing a tribute to a young entrepreneur in England who is working towards cleaner water.

Americans “ love to flush and forget” says Virginia Gardner, recent graduate, industrial designer and founder of the small startup company Loowatt. But the practice of crapping in our drinking water and then using chlorine to kill the pathogens (potentially creating toxic trihalomethanes in the process) is deluded if not downright stupid. Humans, however, are nothing, if not ingenious. In October 2010 the WTO ( World Toilet Organization) founded in 2006 by another visionary named Jack Sim whose motto is 'live a useful life', held its annual summit in Philadelphia bringing together activists, engineers, and health experts at a showcase and information exchange for contractors and the general public on sustainable sanitation.

Waterless toilets that compost waste can operate effectively to produce pathogen free compost without power or water. They have been popular for years with owners of seasonal homes and cabins as they are simple to install and need no costly water hungry septic system. However, the developed world with its existing infrastructure of sewage plants and waterlines has lagged in adopting the technology more widely, while cost has limited their use in third world countries. But time and water are running out. Yemen, some believe, could be the first nation in modern history to run completely out of water. Using less and not putting human sewage in it, is vital to the health and productivity of billions of humans and to earth's water, too.

There are a number of intriguing new designs for waterless toilets coming on the market. Virginia Gardener presented a paper at the WTO on her toilet that generates power. She first worked on the project as a graduate student at The Royal College of Art in London.

After a couple of false starts (the red wriggler worm model was a little too “earthy” and was quickly scrapped) she worked out a system with an inexpensively produced waterless toilet to collect poo in an air tight package that is then transferred to a separate biodigester. This in turn creates and collects methane for use as a cooking fuel along with liquid fertilizer and solids that can be composted. The digester is a basic low tech affair wrapped in insulation made of hemp and flax fibers to preserve heat during the process. ( the methane producing bacteria require a warm environment for efficient gas production.)

A test toilet was set up at the Willowtree Marina near London's Heathrow Airport in the fall of 2010 and Virgina and her co workers at LooWatt continue to refine the concept and it's market. For more on her endeavor and that of the WTO (helping save our water one flush at a time). And don't miss The Big Squat on Nov 19 2011!

visit http://www.loowatt.com/ ( where a short and enlightening video describes the concept of human generation)

and Jack Sim's effort http://www.worldtoilet.org/index.asp

Beach College

2011-03-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

I'm offering an introduction to Beach College on May 5 6:30 pm at the Brown Road branch campus Wolcott. As I wrote last month on the LOLOL (Lake Ontario Log On Line at www.silverwaters.com) strong connections between nature and families are vital to everyone's well being and beach college is a fun way to enjoy and strengthen some of those connections.

I've headed to the edge ever since I could toddle. My first salt water experience was a visit to a sandy beach somewhere near Boston where family relatives resided. I slogged through what seemed like miles of deep sand so different from my native narrow pebble beaches. I saw and chased gulls the size of eagles (when I was five years old.) And I waded into icy seawater up to my ankles and quickly retreated. Then I told my mother I liked my little beach back home with its summer warm lake much better. A year or two later a trip to a finger lakes cottage introduced me to fossil hunting on a narrow bit of rocky shore. I still recall the thrill of discovery, the greedy gathering, the delight I took in my horde of fossil brachiopid shells and small horn corals which I thought were fossil teeth from a giant carnivore. Several jars of them kicked around my house for years.

In college and beyond when I started cruising with various sailboats, I advanced my littoral studies after landing on many more beaches. I explored sandy beaches on the Chesapeake where I once stranded my Lighting on a falling tide. I peered into tide pools on Maine's coast and pried mussels off the rocks of Cape Ann to steam for an impromptu clam bake in a biology lab. One August night during a red tide I discovered a low tide mudflat that illuminated with a flash of cold fire under each footstep. And as millions of tourists have done through the ages, I walked the glorious white sands of tropical beaches.

Beside the water, alone or with family and friends, endless varied treasures and memories await the beach college student. Perhaps you'll find a message in a bottle or some useful item of salvage. Perhaps a fossil worm borrow, sea lily stem fragment, bryozoans, cephalopods, or a brachipod shell fragment will turn up.

Science tells us the more awareness an organism has of its environment, the better its chances of survival are. Our environment consists of more than computer games, shopping malls, highways, and fast food restaurants. It includes air, water, and beaches. For your own good and that of the planet, take a course at Beach College this summer.

Saving Water

2011-02-07T16:59:00.000-08:00

HOW How To Help Our Water by Conserving It

This is the fourth in our HOW Helping Our Water series, published in several local media that expands upon items from Sid's list (first published in my book Twinkle Toes and the Riddle of the Lake).This one is posted with a nod to arid southern California where the author is now visiting. Item number 7 from Sid's list is Save Water and the photo shows what southern California looks like without input from the Colorado River.

So why should we who live near a freshwater sea worry about saving water? Unlike San Diego with annual rain falls of 8 inches a year, don't we have lots? Yes, but when we use it, it gets DIRTY. Since the dawn of time dilution has been the solution to pollution. But Earth now supports 7 billion people, and that “solution” just isn't working too good anymore.

Somehow, I have long found the logic of drinking water and then crapping in the same water supply a bit offensive, if not downright deluded. Increasingly, others agree. This was made clear at the 2010 Annual World Toilet Summit, the biggest yet, held in Philadelphia last fall.

As several participants at this year's trade fair and technology showcase for plumbers noted, the U.S. with its regionally abundant water supplies lags far behind China, Europe and even the so called Third World when it comes to adopting more efficient toilet technology. We're still stuck with our mindset of disposing of human crap by treating it with chemicals to kill pathogens and then dumping it in our drinking water. However, groups like PHLUSH (Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human) and the WTO ( That's World Toilet Organization, now active in 58 countries, NOT the global money men) are trying hard to make friends and influence people on behalf of the waterless toilet.

These toilets have improved dramatically since the 1970's. I personally know three people with composting toilets who are quite satisfied with them and can testify there was no more smell associated with their use than with a conventional set up. And they're simple to install too, no pricey septic system required! You can even get them for marine and RV use.

If you can't swallow the price tag for one aboard the boat or stomach the idea of a waterless toilet in your house, then at least spring for a low flush model if you haven't already got one or put a brick in the toilet tank of your old dinosaur.

While the the toilet and flushing same is one of the biggest household users of water, a lot also goes down the tub and shower drain. The Minnesota extension service website estimates 75% of the typical 260 gallons a day used by a household of 4 goes down bathroom drains or toilet thanks to lavish and frequent baths and showers. Admittedly, a leisurely long soak in the tub is a great stress reducer, but there are good reasons to NOT bathe every day.

Too much bathing can dry the skin causing itching and discomfort. And recent research shows it also totally messes up the intricate balance of our skin's 'ecosystem' of bacteria. The 'good' bacteria present on our skin help us stay healthy so it's very much in our interest to not wash them all down the drain every day. Dr. Richard Gallo of San Diego's UCSD studies healing and wound repair. He has found our skin makes natural antibiotics that reduce skin infection, and that some of our skin bacteria actually fight pathogenic bacteria like the infamous Staph aureus of hospital fame.

Less frequent hot water baths save energy, too. Less electricity use directly impacts Lake Ontario, home to a whole fleet of power plants- all of which use water to cool their turbines, cooking a whole lot of plankton and adding still more chemicals to the lake in the process. Low flow shower heads and shallower baths in the tub help, too.

Along with numerous daily showers and toilet flushes, the other big area for household water savings is irrigation. As written about previously in the lawn care column, good soil with lots of organic content and appropriate grass plantings can help your lawn withstand dry spells. Mulch the flowers and vegetables, too. If you do water the lawn and garden, follow practices like morning irrigation and water deeply to encourage root growth. Sometimes, you can water those special dry areas of the lawn by hand. And by all means, start up an old fashioned rain barrel.

There are many good websites on water conservation.

check out eartheasy.com for water saving tips in house and yard

composting toilets- http://www.comparethebrands.com/compare/134

Ice water and antibiotics

2011-01-09T11:39:00.000-08:00

This is a follow up to the recent post about manure and other affairs on the lake shore. The edge walker mushed through the snow for a check on ice development at the edge Jan 8. The ice forms and melts and reforms with astonishing speed this time of year. The photos taken round 0900 are interesting if you check the radar image. In the distance in the photo on the left you can see the cloud bank that clearly shows in the radar from that same time.

A couple hours later the light south wind had shifted north and the cloud bank moved south and by 1400 hours we had a short but heavy snow fall. It looked like classic fluffy lake effect, though the band formation perpendicular not parallel to the surface wind was very different from the usual lake snow band.

The ice formations suspended from the anchor ice in the top photo had disappeared completely three hours later, merged into a solid wall.

Below is a link to legislation we will be tracking and writing more about in the future.

http://atwork.avma.org/2010/12/10/bill-of-the-week-newyork-sb80-sb85/

This week, New York pre-filed SB 80, which would provide that no person shall engage in the non-therapeutic use of antimicrobial agents in cattle, poultry, sheep, swine, or any animal raised for the purpose of providing food for human consumption, including animals that provide non-meat food products such as eggs and milk. In addition, it would provide that no person shall sell, expose for sale, or transport for sale within New York, regardless of place of origin, any food product derived from an animal that has been subject to non-therapeutic use of antimicrobial agents.

The quote below is from a food industry website that states the benefits of antibiotic use in dairies outweigh the dangers. Apparently the bacteria inside the COW aren't developing resistance which means the industry will want to keep using the antibiotics in question. But meantime outside bacteria are developing resistance! Not all observers including me agree with this website's conclusion of no danger to humans.

“On the basis of this review, we conclude that scientific evidence does not support widespread, emerging resistance among pathogens isolated from dairy cows to antibacterial drugs even though many of these antibiotics have been used in the dairy industry for treatment and prevention of disease for several decades. However, it is clear that use of antibiotics in adult dairy cows and other food-producing animals does contribute to increased antimicrobial resistance.”

The italics are mine. Other scientific studies in peer reviewed journals that are not funded by the food business clearly show increased “gene swapping” occurs in water and soil below CAFO farms. This can lead to antibiotic resistance moving between different bacteria. The Union of Concerned Scientists website states that perhaps 70 % of pharmaceuticals used in agriculture are fed to “healthy” farm animals to promote growth. Beef cows in crowded feed lots, pigs, chickens and dairy cows kept indoors in large buildings are subject to unnatural behaviors and stresses. The antibiotics are fed to boost their immune systems and keep them from getting sick. Dairies use lesser amounts of antibiotics than some types of CAFOs but do use them both on adult cows and on calves. The following comes from www.sustainabletable.org. They quote an annual 18,000 deaths and 4 billion dollar a year as costs from antibiotic resistance which they say is almost certainly an underestimate that doesn't include all the lost days at work etc.

“Although everyone is at risk when antibiotics stop working, the threat is greatest for young children, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems, including cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, organ transplant patients and, in general, people whose health is compromised in some way”

More soon on this topic. My guess is the well entrenched dairy biz in NY will lobby for an exemption. Do we really want that!?

more dead birds and manure?

2011-01-06T14:53:00.001-08:00

Awhile back I wrote about manure's impact on excess water and aquatic plant growth.Excess weeds and algae that grew and then rotted and promoted botulism outbreaks that in turn killed thousands of birds on Lake Ontario a few years ago. Last summer a bad blue green algae bloom on Sodus Bay got the attention of the homeowners there. Certainly manure spread on fields upstream could be contributing to the problem of too much fertilizer in the bay. Several members of the Cafo Awareness Network are planning to sample water next spring in an effort to determine if indeed manure on fields in Rose might be finding its way into the waters of Sodus or East Bay. Then I heard abut the new pit.

I took a drive over to Savannah- Spring Lake last weekend. As a card carrying member of Cafo Awarenness Network I felt obligated to check it out. I found a hill overlooking a forty or fifty acre wetland complete with two eagles perched in shoreline trees surrounded by more forested hills and farmland. The view was of some of the prettiest landscape in the county though I suspect it's hard to keep bare soil on these hillsides in a rain. Atop the hill sat tons of manure in piles. Across the street a couple acres of mud and a collection of parked heavy equipment suggested the rumored manure pit in the making was well under way.

So why worry? Who cares? This farm is following “best management practices” isn't it? Well for one thing, best management practices are quite simply not the best, even when scrupulously followed. In other areas of New York state wells have been ruined and streams and bays have been clogged with algae and weed growth because of too much manure spread on too little land. A solid inch of manure laid down on top of snow on a hillside with a creek at the bottom (see photo) will not stay in place when the snow melts.

What if a little too much fertilizer goes into a swamp? What if there is a little tiny fish kill? It's just carp and suckers and bullheads. Who cares if the birds in Montezuma have to deal with rotting algae and polluted water next summer? Who cares if the folks on Sodus bay can't get their boats through the weeds at their docks?

Well for one thing, it's not just fertilizer. All CAFOs (yes, dairies too) use at least some antibiotics. Peer reviewed studies have documented increased 'gene swapping' that transfers antibiotic resistance between different types of bacteria downstream from CAFO operations. Some of these bacteria can sicken humans.

Too much fertilizer in drinking water has been linked to bladder cancer in humans.

In other parts of the US rural homeowners have successfully sued and appealed to reduce their property taxes because of stench and pollution associated with CAFO agriculture. If their taxes go down, other town residents must take up at least some of the slack or suffer the consequences of budget cuts. Do you want to pay more for milk at the grocery or more at tax time?

A 3000 cow dairy produces four times as much sewage as Syracuse. Where will the farm go next? Will it expand again into your neighborhood?

There is another reason to care. Get ready for a Big Word folks. Too much fertilizer in water chokes out native plants and kills off native animals. Tough hardy “weeds” take their places. This survival of the fittest in a polluted world reduces Biodiversity. Take my word for it. Lost biodiversity is a bad thing. It's bad for economic, physical, and to some people maybe most important of all, for moral and spiritual reasons It's stupid too.

Read more about the problem and what we can do about it here.

http://newyork.sierraclub.org/conservation/agriculture/Wasting_NYS_Report.pdf

please note there are also a couple of pig feeding operations in the area of the photos. I am not claiming any particular origin for the manure spread in photograph. I am saying however, it is poor practice whether it's cow shit or pig shit wherever it's from.

A New Review for Twink

2010-12-31T14:00:00.000-08:00

I was poking around the Internet with no particular objective in mind and was surprised to find this book review of Riddle of the Lake. It ran in the magazine last winter. I was pleased to see the reviewer considered the cats' antics amusing. Others have told me the books message of environmental change was NOT unduly depressing but I was happy to see this reviewer apparently agreed. Having said that change continues and not all of it is for the best. More soon.

Book review from Life in the Finger Lakes Magazine by Laurel C. Wemett
Twinkle Toes and The Riddle of the Lake
By Susan Peterson Gateley
Ariel Associates/Whiskey Hill Press
www.silverwaters.com

Paperback: $15.95

The notion of three landlubber cats sailing one of the Great Lakes is the perfect plot twist for author Susan Peterson Gateley’s latest book. The action unfolds through the perspective of a cranky but determined cat named Twinkle Toes. She and her mother, Dusty, and her cousin, Miss Piggy, reluctantly accompany “Skipper Sue” across Lake Ontario to Canada in the yacht Ariel. Along the way, the feline protagonist regularly “converses” with Harry, a seagull, among other lake dwellers.

The book will appeal to youthful readers and adults alike. A strong underlying ecological theme steers the reader to learn about some of the disappearing species on the lake.

Gateley’s narrative captures cat attitudes perfectly, and Pat Cooper’s illustrations add appeal. The journey through fair weather and foul naturally tests the cats’ endurance. From seasickness to repeatedly sneaking ashore, the trio’s amusing escapades help illuminate the serious changes in the lake’s environment.

Part two of the book is called “Skipper Sue’s Notebook.” It offers a lengthy appendix filled with fascinating historical data and essays on assorted ecological topics.

A New Year a New Blog

2010-12-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

When I initiated this experiment I stated I'd be writing about Lake Ontario, beach combing and other topics. After a four year hiatus, the blog is steering a new course. You never know what will turn up when you go for a stroll on the neighborhood beach. Likewise, this writer never knows what the next story will be as I amble through life itself. But I do know this. Tom Wolfe was right when he said there are stories all around you.

I sometimes finds unexpected topics that cry for coverage. Like shale gas. A friend of mine down in Pennsylvania who I met through sailing on Lake Ontario is watching a well that's going in behind her house. And last winter the 'thumper trucks' were all over the next town south of here doing seismic tests for gas. So I wrote two articles on shale gas fraking and the concern about its impact on local water for a regional magazine. I've also sent out magazine stories on circumzenithal arcs, sailing an old schooner without a motor, an all female tall ship training program and lake based wind turbines.
Last fall I posted to a personal blog about beach combing ( and other activity) in Denmark. We fly all the way over there as tourists for ten days and what do we do? Fill our pockets with Danish beach pebbles for keepsakes!

A few months ago I was amazed to learn that Oswego County was being considered for an 80,000 cow feedlot operation, the biggest concentration of bovines east of the Mississippi in connection with the new ethanol plant in Fulton. (I guess they feed the cows left over crap from the ethanol plant. ) What has this got to do with Lake Ontario? Well, the ethanol plant grain is coming in by barge through the port of Oswego. And the manure from 80,000 cows has lots of potential to be of interest to lake watchers.

So hang on to your hat. Anything goes this time around. More soon if I can remember my password!

the (intermittant) shifty shore series begins

2006-12-22T13:23:00.000-08:00

Winter weather makes walking the shore more difficult. While we're indoors I'm going to start a series on our shifty shoreline and its social and natural history. This will be an occasional series as time and research dictates.

(the two photos are of Scotts bluff an actively eroding pile of glacial till near my home-the pinacle in the left photo shows in left side of photo above)

Ecology is about connections. In late December my good friend Roland launched a Civil Disobedience action at a Scotts Bluff home building site. He did so because he wanted people to understand the connection between luxury resort home construction on the lake shore and the relentless fraying of the tapestry of life that continues to thin as threads are broken and lost.

How do you make people see that there are connections between their personal lifestyle choices and the general well being of our planetary life support system? I'm going to give it a shot though I'm not optimistic about any impacts or understanding that may result.

The shore of a great lake, like that of an ocean, is a shifty restless piece of real estate. It's dynamic and inherent instability makes it an interesting place. That's part of its appeal as a home site. But no homeowner wants to see his house be washed away by that shiftiness. So inevitably human ingenuity comes to the rescue and the beach is “armored”, locked away and entombed beneath a pile of large rocks. Now you have a view but no more beach. Problem is, your neighbors or public shoreline lands nearby also don't have a beach if enough homeowners go the “hardening” route in order to protect their own little piece of paradise.

On Lake Ontario, as elsewhere, material eroded from the shore becomes the beach. It then is moved along on the south side of the lake as “drift” carried generally west to east. Seawalls that stop erosion also shut down the beach formation process. Any unarmored land, once it loses its beach, will erode even faster since the waves strike directly upon the foot of the shore. So the more you “harden” the worse erosion gets for unprotected land. No one, shoreline owners and the general public alike, gets to enjoy a beach either.

For the rich guy with his “trophy house” who doesn't care about anything but a view, this may be acceptable. But for those of us who cherish walking along the water's edge, the world is a poorer place for no longer having beaches. And as we shall see, the vanished beach literally makes us poorer, too, as it usually ends up costing the taxpayers (many of whom don't own waterfront property) a great deal of money.

In posts to come we'll look at how some other communities are trying to deal with and “manage” beach erosion. There have been some truly spectacular foul ups in this endeavor. Guess who is paying for them?

seasonal variations in beach trash

2006-12-15T15:22:00.000-08:00

The trash found along this short stretch of shoreline is a snapshot of the wider world. It's a sampling that reflects human and natural activity in two nations. These days during the season of winter northwester winds, a surprisingly common component of beach trash is customs seals from containers. One suspects Toronto and or possibly the Hamilton area are the sources. Like the zebra mussels and the round gobies the little plastic strips reflect globalized economic activity on and around the lake.

The one to the left says prologix- a global logistics company that presumeably does business in Toronto harbor.

Another common component and year around of the beach trash “community” are the ubiquitous tampon applicators ( known as New Jersey sea shells to some beach combers.)They seem to pass through the sewage treatment plants with little difficulty. One wonders what else unseen goes into our lake from the waste pipes? Pharmaceuticals?various household toxins?gold fish and dead mice? Strange and new bacterial spores or radioactive cat litter? Maybe we don't want to know.

Large pieces of drift wood often with saw cuts, are everywhere along the terminal berm reflecting I suppose the rains of late summer and fall and subsequent floods and heavy outflows of tributary rivers. Not long ago a male body washed up on Port Bay's beach about 2 miles west of where I walk. He had hiking boots on. Had he fallen into a river? Surprisingly frequent on this walk were pieces of rusty steel. Did heavy currents move them out into the lake? Or did they reflect more houses being eaten up by lake shore erosion and heavy fall storms?The metal frame and springs of an upholstered chair seem explainable by river flooding. But a cinder block? Already rounded by wave action one suspects this has to be a recent immigrant to the beach trash community.

Perhaps the most common trash item consistently present on the beach at all seasons is a juice or water bottle. Also quite common lately are throw away lighters. Odd to think that perhaps the most enduring artifacts of our current society are items of trash. They say a plastic spoon is good for at least a couple hundred years. Pampers take a couple generations to decompose in landfills. And the contents of the steel casks of rad waste now parked by the lake will remain toxic for at least a hundred thousand years-a span approaching geological time.

Only ten more shopping days until Christmas.

extreme beach combing

2006-12-08T18:16:00.000-08:00

In response to the recent post about strange sea serpents I will post a find from two years ago. this was eveidently a stranded sea serpent that beached during its spawning season. It displays the typical breeding tubercles of the greater black plasticus (freshwater morph.) A day or two after this was taken it had disappeared...

In ten years of working this stretch of beach this is by far the biggest beach treasure I ever spotted. But maybe somebody else can do better? send photos to susan@silverwaters.com

first post for lake ontario edgewalker's blog

2006-12-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

This blog from the edge will consist of periodic posts by me and hopefully others on beaches, beach treasures, beach mysteries and I suspect other topics, too.We'll focus on Lake Ontario beaches at least for now since that's where my finds will be from mainly.

Beaches are special places. I love ranging far and wide upon the open waters of the lake with my sailboat. But I also enjoy exploring afoot. You can keep going back to a good beach because it keeps changing. Every week it's different and new again. New skipper stones, new lucky rocks, new oddities and driftwood. Beaches in general are among the most dynamic and ephemeral of landscapes. This is what makes building houses by and on them so problematic. Yet we're drawn to that very quality of the shore. You just never know what might turn up there. Kinda like e Bay.

A couple weeks ago a friend and I found this fragment of a plastic sign(see photo to left). Great lakes school? We couldn't quite make out the letters above. But the run together small letters suggested url to us. I tucked the fragment in my pocket and took it home to show to my spouse. Great Lakes Schooner he guessed and googled it. Sure enough. There's a company that does boat rides with a big steel three master and a bunch of other boats around Toronto.http://greatlakesschooner.com

So what's the coolest, oddest, weirdest or just plan way out thing you've found on the beach? I'll see if I can figure out how to post my favorite here tomorrow. Meantime, send me a photo and or description of your best beach "treasure". send it to susan@silverwaters.com Happy hunting.