SESSION 1: "Part 1: Big Ox Energy will describe how a private/public partnership will convert high strength wastewaters, sludges and solid organics into renewable natural gas for injection into an interstate/intrastate natural gas pipeline grid. The project under development will take in wastes both piped in and trucked in for anaerobic digestion. The project broke ground in May, 2015. Its upper Midwest location is in the center of America’s industrial-scale food manufacturing and processing belt. Meatpacking and processing plants, fruit and vegetable canning, cereal manufacturing, and breweries produce hundreds of tons of waste each day that create a disposal challenge, which this project aims to solve.
Part 2: Converting over 1,400 tons per year of food scraps from local restaurants, schools and supermarkets into renewable natural gas fuel, electricity and value-added lawn and garden products, the Nebraska Organic Waste Resources (NOW Resources) Project is Lincoln, Nebraska’s first commercial food waste-to-energy program. The project will provide enough renewable energy to fuel a dedicated CNG trash truck, while making the partnership a net exporter of electricity and creating compost and liquid fertilizer as byproducts. The project is a partnership between Uribe Refuse Services, Inc., and Nebraska Organic Waste Energy, Inc., and is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Nebraska Environmental Trust."
In addition to this session, I spent an hour talking to the Big Ox crew. They showed me the schematics for their Wisconsin facility and explained they only need big stakeholders in Cedar Rapids to sign on to be able to build a facility in our area. With a facility in our area, they would be in a position to divert animal, agricultural, and human (including packaging and food scraps) waste from Kirkwood into concentrated, liquid fuel for use in car fleets, etc. The compressed gas they produce as fuel can be used in modified diesel engines including school buses! Their greatest success (it seems) thus far is in South Sioux Falls where industrial waste was overwhelming municipal services (including water treatment facilities in Sioux Falls, IA. Unfortunately, cities like Des Moines already have tax payer funded, oversized nitrate processing water treatment facilities and cannot afford to now invest in diverting industrial and agricultural waste.
The second session regarding Lincoln, Nebraska features a much smaller-scale process of separating food waste from packaging and then using AD to turn the product into natural gas for a fleet of waste trucks. The process is less capital-intensive, but smaller scale and focused on food waste with hand sorting from packaging. On the plus side, this project is replicable by a variety of entities within the city. The organizers also recognize the need for increased education regarding food waste on the front end. They wish to educate regarding nutrition needs and the perils of food waste in addition to better conversion to energy and diversion from landfills.
Unfortunately, both solutions are designed to work within our existing food and agricultural production rather than challenging the production of waste in the first place. That said, until we have reverse deleterious trends in production, diversion from rivers and landfills is better than nothing. [The Big Ox folks and I discussed the sad irony of the Des Moines Register front page articles (side by side) regarding reclaiming water use via recreation and the increased nitrate levels in said waterways.]
SESSION 2: "This presentation examines the relationship between the environmental consequences of sprawl development patterns and the economic viability of the places we build. Current research has uncovered an alarming disassociation between the perceived economic growth of suburban development and the true costs attached to such investments. The take-away from the talk will focus on urban design principles supportive of strong environments and economies from the scale of the region to the scale of the street. The financial numbers behind the impact of the physical characteristics of a place and its economic performance will be the lens through which these principles are studied. Case studies will include a comprehensive land use and transportation master plan for the greater metropolitan region of Chicago and the redevelopment of Main Street Broken Arrow, OK."
I think the above session is a nice complement to the keynote yesterday about the problems associated with sprawl and the new demand (and cost savings) associated with the 'old' model of live and work in place town squares. The presentation also addresses reclamation of buildings rather than demolition as a means to supporting sustainability. Additionally, reclamation adds jobs and commercial potential.
The awesome part of this presentation is meeting Peter Ruklic of 'undependentRockIsland' who suggested paradigm-shifting videos about walkable cities and environmental discussions wrongly focusing on wilderness rather than cities. I haven't had time to view the longer videos he referenced on youtube ("Strongtown Curbside Chat Pondering Idaho" and "Cities for People, John Gehl (from Melbourne, Australia)," but I am super excited to see "Walkable City" by Jeff Speck. This is the video Peter mentioned that challenges us to look at city use as central to environmental concerns.
The noon keynote includes discussion of how love for place can motivate grassroots activism and community development. I think 'love of place' is an important intangible (also implicit in current class changes), but tricky for a student population that may wish to leave home. That said, I think 'home' comes in many forms for our current students and hopefully a 'love of Kirkwood' can be engendered with personal connections and also potential for student-led campus actions and physical transformations.
Unfortunately, the conference in general has failed (as have most) to articulate a shared definition of 'sustainability' (something I discussed with NICC's President at lunch yesterday). Likewise, we've failed to note that we cannot sustain these sick systems, but rather need to deconstruct them before creating newer, saner, humaner, and potentially 'sustainable' ones.
AFTERNOON MOBILE TOUR: "The Catfish Creek Watershed Management Authority was created in 2012 to educate watershed residents, farms and businesses about the resource an impact their actions have on water quality and runoff and complete projects that improve the quality of the diverse 57 square-mile watershed. The Water & Resource Recovery Center, a $67 million project, harnesses biogas from anaerobic digestion to use for heating and cooling generation, collects high-strength waste from nearby food processing plants, and makes biosolids, which were previously considered waste, available for fertilizer on local farm ground. This tour will include examples of the watershed management's agenda and a tour of the new W&RRC."
The afternoon tour was actually pretty cool. The first part featured what I didn't even realize was Dubuque's waste water treatment (commercial and residential) facility near the Mines of Spain. The facility features anaerobic digesters that produce 75% of the current energy needed to run the plant and may soon expand to include methane from food scraps as well as production of liquid gas for use in City of Dubuque transportation fleets.
The second portion of the tour featured something near and dear to my heart (especially after getting my first ever infection from water): The Catfish Creek Watershed. The executive summary provided reveals that all five branches of Catfish Creek exceed nitrogen and phosphorous (something the City waste treatment facility is looking at extracting to reduce 'dead zones' downstream and save on phosphorous mining for fertilizer use which is expected to be depleted in less than 50 years) levels. Additionally, many branches exceed E. coli acceptable levels as well. As a result, Swiss Valley:
is working to reclaim stream beds to prairie (to absorb rain), working with area farmers (including paying for 75% of run-off remediation via State and Federal grants), and implementing rain gardens to deal with storm run-off:
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