Decentralized Wastewater Treatment/Reuse

John’s passion and work revolve around the broad field of planetary healing. John was educated at McGill University (BA in Agriculture and MSc in Parasitology) and holds a PhD from University of Michigan (Fisheries & Oceanography). He has also received two honorary doctorates. He has received over a dozen awards including the first Buckminster Fuller Challenge, “Design for a Carbon Neutral World: The Challenge of Appalachia” for the best idea to help save humanity.  He was named a “Hero of the Planet” by Time Magazine in 2000. He has been a hero to many of us here at Biohabitats, and we were thrilled to chat with him about the use of Eco-Machines for on-site wastewater treatment and reuse.

Much of your early work in the 1970s centered around the use of ecological design for food production. Can you share a bit of that background with us, and then tell us what led you to focus on wastewater treatment?

At the same time, I was also working as an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. At that time, there was talk of using atomic energy to dig a sea-level canal in Central America from the Pacific to the Atlantic.  I was hired by the Atomic Energy Commission to find out if fishes that live in the Atlantic interbreed and hybridize with fishes from the same family that live in the Pacific.

The first thing I did was to try to simulate tropical, intertidal environments in greenhouses; in this case I used geodesic structures. So I had to learn how to assemble ecosystems. Inspired by noted ecologist Howard T. Odum’s theories about designing complex systems and having them self-organize, self-design, and self-repair, I said, “I’m going to try this!”

We were in the north and the ecosystems had to be tropical as well as recycling, so that they could heat themselves up and stay warm. I had to have tidal ecosytems that were so genuine that the marine fishes would breed in captivity. Very few marine fishes had ever been bred at that time. I flew to Costa Rica and collected live specimens of Bathygobius from both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I discovered that a goby from the Atlantic would interbreed with a goby from the Pacific, but not with another species of goby from the Atlantic. I don’t think my report, which indicated that there would be problems with a sea level canal, influenced the course of history one bit. The interesting part was the designing of ecosystems with a specific function.

We understood that if we were going to create a new technology, we needed to borrow strategies from different kinds of parent ecosystems; a marsh, a pond, and moving components like streams or rivers. This understanding, along with the science of assembly, led us to the design of these systems. In the end, our technologies ended up being mechanically quite simple. We used aeration throughout parts of our design, and discrete cells that were connected to form a stream or river, like beads on a string. This system was able to convert the terribly polluted water to clean water in just a little over ten days. It was quite amazing.

One of the great biologists of the 20^th century, Lynn Margulis, was a big influence on me. Her students looked at life inside this system—this toxic reservoir—and they could identify all of the organisms they found. However, they saw communities they had never seen before on Earth. In other words, Nature was inventing new communities in response to the type and strength of the waste in each stage of the treatment process. That was quite a revelation, and I was humbled. At that stage, I knew that I could never understand the pathways, complexities, and mechanisms that were going on in these tanks. Only in recent years have we begun to get inside some of these ‘ecological black boxes’ with genetic inventorying and very recent microbial work. 2016 is a very interesting time. It is a good era to be an aquatic scientist and to be interested in remediating polluted waters.

In lay terms, what is an Eco-Machine™, and how does it clean polluted water?

For example, an eco-machine will use the roots of higher plants, which are often rafted on the surface, as an active source of the transfer of photosynthetic energy in the form of carbon products into supporting the beneficial communities around the root systems. A conventional system might use a [synthetic] media which is sticky enough that bacteria like it.

Eco-machines have a diversity of functions. Their commonality is that the designer or engineer creates the processes within the machine based on the task it must complete. Eco-Machines™ have been used to grow food, treat sewage, clean up toxic waste, remediate damaged environments, and even to generate fuel.

For example, if you want your Eco-Machine™ to treat sewage, you have to make sure there is enough retention time in the system to allow for the complete conversion of ammonia to nitrogen gas. As in most wastewater treatment systems, that’s going to involve oxygen-driven processes and oxygen-starved environments in order to complete the process. You also need to make sure you have enough surface area for microorganisms so that they can utilize the BOD [biochemical oxygen demand] as a food source. You also want to have the proper sites for organisms that will take the water and clarify it. To remove the pathogens biologically, there has to be enough retention time and enough exposure to an oxygen-rich environment for the organisms that handle that task.

Eco-machines are beneficial because they decrease the amount of energy and external chemicals normally used in a conventional system, and most of the heavy lifting is done by life itself.

Can eco-machines also be economic engines?

Do you suspect there are places in the world or segments of society that would not only accept the Eco-Machine™ but where there would be opportunity for economic tie in?

A good place to start might be to use the early stages of riparian plants, as seedlings and young shrubs, in the treatment process. I could see a community using their Eco-Machine™ to produce the genetic material [which contractors might otherwise have to purchase from specialty nurseries] for streambank restoration and riparian recovery projects. Another revenue source that we have developed is cut flowers that thrive in the treatment process. Calla lilies are a good example.

What has been one of your most valuable failures–in terms of lessons learned–in the use of Eco-Machines to treat wastewater?

Where we as a community of practitioners learn the most from our mistakes is during the process of commissioning Eco-Machines. Usually, the systems are seeded by a diversity of life. Very often that includes a slug of microorganisms from another sewage treatment plant. The commissioning of a system, also known as the ramping up process, is complex ecological business. Unfortunately, we usually do not budget or allow the resources for someone who really understands that when you seed a system, it’s not a single seeding. It’s a multi-level system that builds as the system learns. The rate at which it accepts waste also has to incrementally increase; it cannot start as a full-blown system. This ramping up process is between a one- and two-month time period, yet we rarely have our applied ecologists on the ground during this period.

I think one of the reasons why the Eco-Machine™ in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Florida is working better than it was 25 years ago is because the system is learning from the surrounding swamp itself. Life from outside is getting in, so the system is constantly self-designing and self-organizing. The system is open to the environment, so such an exchange is possible in that case.

What advice can you share for architects, designers, or engineers who want to encourage a risk-averse client to consider an Eco-Machine™ for on-site wastewater treatment?

Another driver is that more and more people want to build systems that are carbon positive, and will meet the needs of the Living Building Challenge.

Have you seen any situations where Eco-Machines™ do not make sense?

Yes. If a community has the climate and the land, why not go with a beautiful constructed wetland, which is a guaranteed carbon positive system that uses very little energy? That is a no brainer. This constructed wetland can be turned into botanical gardens, so people can come to appreciate this living thing that is doing so much for them.

You have inspired a generation of ecological engineers. You have mentioned H.T. Odum and Lynn Margulis. Who else inspired you early in your education or career?

H.T. Odum’s book Environment, Power and Society was a big influence on me. At McGill and at the University of Michigan I had two or three very good professors who were influential. I think I was most influenced by the whole systems thinking that took place in the 60s and 70s, by people like James Lovelock and Gregory Bateson. There is a recent book out about this called Groovy Science. I have always been fascinated by evolution because I think it holds the keys to a lot of future design, so evolutionary scientists have also been important to me. I like to know what happened over the last three billion years. Nature is inventing, testing, trying, rejecting, and mutating all the time. There have got to be some narratives there that we must tap into as Earth stewards.

All of us involved in regenerative design, ecological restoration, and conservation planning see themselves as Earth stewards. The work of trying to rescue the planet from its degraded state is the great work of our time. Fortunately, there is a lot of talent out there.

Looking back to the time when you founded New Alchemy, how far would you say we’ve come in integrating seemingly separate disciplines?

One way to measure it would be to go onto college and university campuses. When I started out, it was impossible for architects, ecologists, engineers, physicists, and horticulturalists to work together. They were in separate silos. There is still a tendency, among scientists, to stay in their silos because early in their careers they struggle for tenure, and tenure is measured by the amount of papers you write around a fairly narrow range of subjects. Today however, there are a number of campuses around the country that have complex collaborations. There are reasons for hope!

You have said that if we can “tease out the hidden language of nature” and look to nature for our instructions, “we could reduce the negative human impact on this planet by as much as 90%.” Generally speaking, how well do you think we are doing in seeking and learning that language?

I just reviewed a book called Grass, Soil, Hope by Courtney White for our publication Annals of Earth. When I finished that book and realized the number of people worldwide who are noticing the transformative potential of this planet, and who are using carbon as a measure of success, I felt very positive. This book does a very good job of explaining what the tools are, who is developing them, and where they are located. White even talks about a group in southern France that figured out how to improve crop yields by having solar panels placed in their fields at a certain height and angle. There is so much strange, wonderful stuff going on!

Speaking of strange, wonderful stuff…earlier, you mentioned that we are gaining the knowledge to unlock more “ecological black boxes.” What ecological black box are you most eager to open?

There is something I’m interested in for global climate reasons. How do we take a body of water that is polluting the atmosphere with excess CO2 and convert it to a body that is sequestering atmospheric CO2? Then how do we transform that CO2 into stable carbon that will remain in the system’s sediment itself for a long period of time?

When we’re trying to heal a pond or something similar, we’re trying to limit one of the primary elements. In our case it’s mostly nitrogen. But I think in doing that, we have not allowed the mechanisms in that body of water to carry out the optimal carbon cycle which will create the opportunity for self-healing in that system. I’m kind of obsessed by that these days. Fortunately, I’m about to start working with some scientists in Florida who are interested in carbon and water. We may start doing experiments at Corkscrews. In soils, there is this sticky protein called glomalin and it is produced by a symbiotic relationship between the roots of plants and funghi. I would like to find the aquatic analog. What are the sticky proteins, if you will, in a body of water, and how do we support their growth?

How can our readers stay up to date on the progress of that research?

Our publication, Annals of Earth contains an article I wrote called “Remediating Polluted Waters.” Every three years or so, I try to update this for the publication.