Transition Initiatives focus on re-localization, developing local self-reliance in meeting human needs. Large centralized systems often sacrifice resilience. Nature doesn’t value efficiency above all other values. Nature values diversity and redundancy --- two components of resilience, the ability to thrive amid changes.
Self-reliance may be better understood as choosing the appropriate scale. It would be absurd for each household to have to provide its own water. The Transition Santa Cruz mission statement speaks of strengthening our local interdependence, a way to improve community self-reliance. Strengthening our local interdependence would indicate that Soquel Creek Water District collaborate with the Pajaro Valley Water Management Association to resolve the critical overdraft of the Aromas Aquifer. Santa Cruz could collaborate with Soquel Creek Water District on a water swap. (See Water Swap: Making Use of Winter Flows) County water policy documents have consistently called for such collaboration.1
The appropriate scale of certain strategies is quite decentralized, such as rainwater catchment and using graywater for irrigation. In this section we explore these strategies.
1 The San Lorenzo River Watershed Management Plan Update (2001) lists the following among “constraints to implementation” of the Plan: “A reluctance among water agencies to combine and coordinate efforts for management of existing water supplies as well as new supply development.”
Articles Wanted on the Potential of Graywater and Rainwater Catchment Please contact the editor
Composting Toilets & Food Security?
The history of the development of modern sewers is an example of society’s failure to deal with human “waste” on an appropriate scale. In an article titled, “Civilization and Sludge”, Abby Rockefeller describes how Western culture has historically missed the opportunity to make positive use of human excreta. “In Europe, there was no consistent perception of the agricultural value of these materials: not as in Asian cultures, where the husbanding of human excreta was (until very recently) unexceptional and routinized.”1
A recent article in Foreign Policy, "Peak Phosphorus", highlights one downside to sending our precious waste down the drain.
"Our dwindling supply of phosphorus, a primary component underlying the growth of global agricultural production, threatens to disrupt food security across the planet during the coming century. Initial analyses from scientists with the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative estimate that there will not be sufficient phosphorus supplies from mining to meet agricultural demand within 30 to 40 years. The geopolitical impacts of such disruptions will be severe, as an increasing number of states fail to provide their citizens with a sufficient food supply." 2
According to Dana Cordell, at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at University of Technology, Sydney, “Urine is essentially sterile and contains plant-available nutrients (P,N,K) in the correct ratio. Combined with other organic sources like manure and food waste, the phosphorus value in urine and faeces can essentially replace the demand for phosphate rock.”3
Sewage management is the second most expensive public works project in America, after highways. And it enable the use of water on a historically unprecedented scale. Abby Rockefeller describes the impact of household water service in the 19th century.
The convenience of a constant water supply stimulated the adoption of residential water fixtures--baths and kitchen sinks as well as flush toilets--dramatically increasing the per capita use of water on average from three to five gallons per person per day to 30 and even 100 gallons per person per day.
The first major environmental impact of city household water service was an outbreak of cholera because mixing human waste with water overflowed local cesspools. In 1832, 20,000 people died of cholera in Paris. Authorities then turned to closed-pipe sewer systems. Deaths from cholera dropped, but typhoid increased because sewers drained into lakes and rivers and groundwater supplies.
With secondary sewage treatment and disinfection of drinking water, the pathogen problem in the US has been largely solved. What hasn’t been solved is the large amount of nitrates and phosphorus pouring into our fresh water systems, spiking growth of algae, turning fresh water bodies into dead zones. The irony is that we go to such trouble to fertilize our farmland with nitrates and phosphorus. Secondary treatment does not fully eliminate the toxics and heavy metals added to waste water from our industrial way of life. Tertiary treatment is very expensive and not widely adopted in the US. Nor is its water purification complete. Some toxics and nitrates persist.
The biggest public health problem associated with sewage treatment has turned out to be disposal of enormous quantities of sludge, the byproduct of treating wastewater. In 1990 the EPA said of sludge, “Typically, these constituents may include volatiles, organic solids, nutrients, disease-causing pathogenic organisms (e.g., bacteria, viruses, etc.), heavy metals and inorganic ions, and toxic organic chemicals from industrial wastes, household chemicals, and pesticides.” Burying sludge or letting it pool in lagoons can pollute groundwater. Spreading it on farmland puts a high level of heavy metals and toxins into the soil. Abby Rockefeller writes about the 1992 EPA policy reversal that allowed sludge to be applied to farmland:
"With the full fanfare and pomp of a formidable public relations campaign, sewage sludge was rechristened “beneficial biosolids.” Thus the EPA’s classification of sludge as a hazardous material was evaporated and then reconstituted…[as] “compost”."
The Santa Cruz wastewater treatment facility trucks its sludge to the Central Valley. The facility’s brochure states, “The solids are then used as soil amendment for nonfood crops in the Central Valley, composting, and/or top cover for valley landfills.” We have no assurance that the compost won’t end up on food crops.
Rockefeller asks "why decentralized solutions to water pollution were not developed and promoted over sewering, since, environmental considerations aside for the moment, they would have saved taxpayers immense amounts of money. The answer is in part the engineering/regulatory bias in favor of top-down, centrally controlled solutions. Health authorities are traditionally skeptical of the people’s ability to manage problems themselves. The regulatory and sanitary engineering community (very much one body, in general) also feels that troubles are safer in its hands."
Ironically, EPA regulations allow toxics to be spread on farmland, but health regulations don’t allow the use of composting toilets. Transition Santa Cruz respects the health concerns regarding composting toilets. In order to be used safely, they require more human care than a flush toilet. However, the alternative, putting our society’s long-term health and farmland fertility in the hands of complex centralized engineering projects, slowly poisons our farmland. We can imagine a future for our community in which composting toilets are legalized, with regular collection of the phosphorus-rich compost bricks and urine for use on local farms.
We trust the ability of citizens to learn the necessary skills to re-localize the composting of excreta. By so doing, we can attain food security. Oh, and reduce our water use as well.
1 Abby A. Rockefeller, “Civilization & Sludge: Notes on the History of the Management of Human Excreta”, Current World Leaders, Volume 39, No. 6
2 Elser & White, “Peak Phosphorus”, Foreign Policy, 4/20/2010 http://phosphorusfutures.net/
3 http://phosphorusfutures.net/why-phosphorus
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