Adventures of an applied ecologist, or shit happens

A detailed description of John Todd's careers would easily fill this magazine. Nevertheless, I asked him to abandon all modesty and describe some of the forces and insights that have driven his various pioneering enterprises. Note that it takes more than outrage, good ideas and demonstration projects to win the widespread acceptance that is needed to be truly effective.

You can read more about John's biological water-treatment plants in the Nov-Dec. 1988 issue of Harrowsmith magazine. To keep up with the project or for more information about it. write Annals of Earth. 10 Shanks Pond, Falmouth, MA 02540. For information on commercial or municipal applications, write to Ecological Engineering Associates, 1 Locust Street, Falmouth, MA 02540.

DURING THE 1970s I was part of a social and scientific experiment known as New Alchemy. New Alchemy was, and still is, a small, not-for-profit "think tank" that created working models of agricultural and architectural systems based upon the teachings of nature (CQ #12). My time there convinced me that ecology would shape culture in the twenty-first century, that the next frontier lay in shaping economic life within an ecological framework. It seemed then, and still does, to be the only way to balance the needs of humanity and the dictates of the environment. Without such a balance our civilization would decay in its own poisons. The ecological imperative also seemed the only path to begin to right the inequities between rich and poor nations.

Ten years ago I embarked upon my first adventure into an ecologically oriented business. The energy crisis was in full swing and our product was to be magnificent modern sailing ships called Occan Arks. To develop these advanced cargo ships I brought together some of the most modern concepts from naval and aeronautical engineering with the idea of helping forge a new age of sail (CQ 23), The ecological part of the business was that the Ocean Arks were to be true arks in the biblical sense of Noah's story, for they were to have on board the biological materials to culture and transport fishes, marine life, trees, ecological microcosms and food crops. The plan was to restore ravaged landscapes on a planetary scale. I planned a fleet that would ply the seas of the world selling high-priced biological products to wealthy nations and simultaneously provide a crop base for poorer societies. I saw the fleet as source of a global pool of information containing restorative organisms to repair damaged environments. I was working with new concepts of ship design, biological culture methods, and ecological restoration. and with their social and political implications.

With fifty thousand dollars of seed money we built a fifty-foot-long, one-fifth-scale proof-of-concept model and tested it off Cape Cod (see Different Boats by Phil Bolger). Some of the sail-propulsion concepts were exciting and worked well. Others were not so good. I was being innovative on too many fronts at once and investors became too nervous to go the next round. I had a dream of ships that would be working symbols for an age of ecology, but not a business. No number of MBAs could have made a business plan of what I had in mind. There were at least a dozen businesses in the plan and they were all fraught with risk. The idea was a financial flop - a "what-not-to-do" case in Paul Hawken's book Growing A Business.

But I couldn't get the oceans and coastal ecological economies out of my blood. I formed another not-for-profit organization, Ocean Arks International. Our logo was the sea turtle, a symbol of creatures who need both land and sea, This time round our scale of activity was small. Our focus was to help coastal fishermen of the third world whose economic fate was determined by unreliable fuel supplies, lack of spare parts, soft currencies and international debt.

The switch from traditional craft to modern gear and engines had, after the initial successes, impoverished millions of small-time fishermen. Our proposed solution was an ultramodern, three-hulled sailing craft, the Ocean Pickup. It was fast and beautiful, and was to be built in third world villages from local materials. Epoxy glues were the only critical imported ingredient in the Dick Newick-designed craft.

We built the prototype in New England. It was 32 feet long. In 1983 1 sailed it to Guyana in South America and the following year to Costa Rica in Central America (CQ #41). With local fishermen we worked to reintroduce sail power and develop environmentally responsible fish-capture methods. I learned a lot about how difficult it is to eke out a living from the sea. Our own finances nosedived as I could not persuade international development agencies or allied foundations to become interested in Latin American fishermen. I borrowed money to keep the project alive. So did our institution. My teenage son jonathan worked for expenses as captain, His friend, Rob Robinson, now an accomplished boat builder, was in charge of technology transfer, but on a national level, we lacked political and financial clout.

When our financial resources began to improve most of the money went to securing the legal right to under- take coastal research in Costa Rica. Small is not beautiful when it comes to research vessels achieving recognition by the appropriate authorities. We decided to join forces with the marine research center at the University of Costa Rica and the project continues in this mode, but on a modest scale and a far cry from the integrated approach to coastal development I had envisioned with the Ocean Pickup as one component linking reforestation, marine farming and agricultural diversification. Of course, it may happen yet.

At this juncture I began to turn my attention towards New England. My experience had taught me that third-world people don't want any part of what they perceive as second-class technologies but respect those of the mainstream of industrial cultures. And by then the time seemed right to test my ecological business ideas in that mainstream. To be successful, a new kind of environmentally responsible wealth had to be created and the technologies to do so had to be accessible not only to the capitalist, but also to the peasant farmer on the hillsides of tropical America.

With two friends I formed a for-profit corporation to develop ecological technologies. It was to be a hybrid between a design studio and commercialization organization. We targeted ocean farming, wastewater purification and "smart" houses as potential areas to develop. One partner was an architect who had started a windmill-manufacturing business and the other, a liberal-arts major with experience in a small woodworking company and the windmill business. I was able to find seed capital from two friends and we hired one of the partners to run the company.

Our course was chartered by my personal response to an impending local crisis. The drinking water of Falmouth, my town in Massachusetts, had deteriorated badly and our cancer rates were climbing alarmingly. The necessity of buying bottled water to help protect me and my family raised a problem I couldn't get out of my mind. Water is the basis of all life. I reasoned that the quality of water determines the quality of life from amoeba to butterfly to human. Thousands of toxic and cancer-causing substances are entering the planetary waters each day. Reflecting on the state of the water reorganized my priorities. For over fifteen years. beginning at New Alchemy, I had raised fish and had learned innumerable tricks to purify water in order to keep the fish healthy. It seemed logical to use the same biological techniques and apply them to purifying water, sewage and other waste streams. An ecosystem approach, while dramatically different from conventional waste engineering, seemed to me to be the best long-term solution to upgrading water quality not only on Cape Cod, but throughout the country.

As it turned out, it was the nonprofit structure of Ocean Arks International which provided the bulk of the support for the new direction. Ecological water purification was too risky for venture capital, which unadventurously waits until risks are minimized or eliminated. But several environmentally concerned foundations liked our ideas for greenhouse-based sewage-purifying ecosystems and backed the construction and operation of a fifteen-thousand-gallon-capacity prototype at Sugarbush, a ski resort in Vermont. Without the foundation help our eco-technology plans would still be in the drawer.

The Vermont facility became the base for a number of breakthroughs in waste treatment. The ecosystems we designed removed toxic ammonia even during the extreme cold of a northern winter. Trout and small-mouth bass were integral to the system and they grew and thrived. Residual sludge was incorporated into the food chains leaving only modest amounts of sediments which were very low in volatile organic matter. This was important as sludge removal and deposition from conventional sewage treatment plants is reaching crisis proportions, Our ecological technology in Vermont created a beautiful, sweet-smelling aquatic environment in which wastes are transformed into pure water, plants, fishes and diverse life forms. No hazardous chemicals were used in the process.

In 1988, 1 subsequently designed and the Ocean Arks staff built a prototype aquatic ecosystem for the town of Harwich on Cape Cod to treat cesspool or septage wastes which are pumped by honey wagons from septic tanks into holding ponds. Septic wastes are as much as one hundred times more concentrated than sewage. No conventional current technology does a good, cost-effective job of treatment. Toxic substances, restaurant fats and greases, and industrial and hospital waste products wreak havoc with normal bacteriological processes.

We used complex, photosynthetically based ecosystems to absorb toxic shocks and organic loading. To our great pleasure, tertiary-quality water was the end product. Fecal coliform levels in the effluent were as low as one one-hundredth those allowable for swimming water. Nitrate levels were below well-water standards. In testing for toxic compounds, we found that fourteen out of the EPA's hit list of fifteen volatile organics were entering the system, three in very high concentrations. After ecological treatment, of the fourteen, thirteen were 100 percent removed and the last, toluene, was 99.9 percent eliminated. The fish at the downstream end of our facility were free of aromatic hydrocarbons, PCBS, and dioxins, The Harwich experiment was a real turning point and has given me real hope. It now seems possible that ecologically engineered systems can restore our water where chemical engineering has so often failed.

By the end of last summer, Harwich had become a Mecca of sorts. Visitors from as far away as Scandinavia and Yugoslavia turned up. Long Island politicians helicoptered in and Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy toured the facility. (Governor Dukakis was scheduled to appear during his campaign but on the scheduled day of his arrival environmental issues were replaced by national security concerns.)

The business community appeared at the Harwich dump as well, and there were signs of interest in backing a commercial enterprise. I was unable to evaluate these potential resources or to ascertain the price of their collaboration. The time had come for a wise soul who was also a tough and successful businessman. One friend flew in from Seattle to look the situation over and reported we were vulnerable on almost every account. Vital proprietary knowledge was not tied down, and our business plan did not reflect a powerful strategy for getting into an area dominated by large engineering firms and chemical and mechanical vendors. In waste management, profits are made in hardware and construction, not on ecological software. Even with sound financing we might not get anywhere against the industrial Goliaths. We did have a new technology that the world urgently needs, but major technological change requires a lot of horsepower. Our friend saw that one option available to us might he to carve a small niche treating sewage for ski resorts and other such small developments with water problems.

Then in August I met a man who was to change our direction. He was a successful businessman and inno- vator who felt the next big challenge lay in biology. He was a keen student of ecology, particularly microbial ecology, and felt - rightly - that microbial ecosystems are the real workhorses of the planet. At Harwich he saw ecology applied and directed towards a given and useful end. I explained to him the essentials of healthy water and he explained to me the essentials of a business in terms of legal, financial, structural, and planning options. The two "ecologies" were equally complex, but somehow linked.

We formed a partnership and established Ecological Engineering Associates, with a mandate to finance, build and operate wastewater facilities and to assure water quality on behalf of communities. As of this writing we hope to begin a longrange project in the town of Harwich, which hosted and helped finance the septage experiment. One of our greatest challenges will be to gain acceptance of state regulatory agencies which are unfamiliar with trees, flowers, marshes and fishes in treatment facilities. The president of EEA is Susan Peterson, a savvy anthropologist, a former associate director of Ocean Arks, and a principal, with her husband john Teal, in a crack environmental consulting firm, Teal Ltd.

My own part in this new chapter of the story is to be an ecological designer. My associates know I don't belong running a company. I am working on ideas to deal with sludges, including those of New York City, and on new ecological technologies to pre-treat drinking water on a city-wide scale. I am also devising applied ecosystems to grow foods. But even when I meditate on issues of scale, my instinct is to devise local solutions and help empower communities. Then I reflect on water and the amount of time left to us and I conclude we need to act on a large scale too. I remember Fritz Schumacher, the author of Small Is Beautiful, once telling me that his views were framed by a world which was dominated by multinationals, but if he found himself in a very parochial world he would have favored multinationals. To him it was a question of balance. These days feedback from the environment is telling us that we need to create change at many levels, from restoring our awareness in the forces of nature to creating profitable water-purifying utilities. We hold the earth in sacred trust and we need to get good quickly at healing the scars.

COPYRIGHT 1989 Point Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group