Mindy Selman on agriculture and eutrophication
Eutrophication can lead to dead zones like this one in the Gulf of Mexico.
(Credit: NASA via Wikipedia user Jkeiser.)
Mindy Selman is a water quality expert at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C.
She studies what scientists call “eutrophication” – the pollution of coastal areas from excess nutrients. Eutrophication can lead to the collapse of fisheries, and toxic dead zones by tipping the ecosystem out of balance.
Selman speaks with EarthSky’s Lindsay Patterson.
I am interested why ‘experts’ don’t embrace proven technologies such as www.clean-flo.com (Clean-Flo International)who have been restoring water bodies to a pristine state naturally for over 36 years around the world.
Eutrophication isn’t merely a result of agricultural fertilizer loading the surface waters and running off into the oceans, creating dead zones or toxic and harmful algal blooms. It is more so a cumulative process which is better termed as ‘Cultural Eutrophication’ (Human involvement in the acceleration of the degredation of the trophic index in which a water body supports plant life over animal life).
We have stressed the environment to the brink of tipping the balance of Mother Nature’s ability to elegantly hold in balance the processing of nutrients through the Phosphorus and Nitrogen cycles, respectively. This has occurred from an over abundance of point source and non-point source loading variables from Agriculture, Urban Development, Automobile emmissions and related wastes from autos, reduction of vegetative buffer zones from overbuilding of coastal areas, highways and shopping malls as well as dysfunctional septic sytems and municipal Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO)as given in NYC’s effluent being discharged into the open waterways of the NY Harbor. (I digress)
Yes, there are no publically funded restoration projects that I know of which can claim any success as corroborated from this interview. WHY... WHY oh WHY.
We have been deluged by global governments like China, India, Taiwan, France, England, Korea to provide them with our engineering and proprietary Clean-Flo International systems to restore their water bodies. We have restored the only river restoration from our process in France, a 42 mile stretch of class 4 (Toxic)river in Formies France, which was restored to class 1-2 in less than two years from our system…. !
We can and should be frantically busy here in our own country implementing this proven technology to treat agricultural regions’ water bodies and all surface water bodies, public and private wherever possible to provide clean water to our coasts. We have had great success in Resevoirs as well.
We use Dissolved Oxygen, Microorganisms and Food Grade Enzymes to accomplish this. We mimic nature in providing multiple inversions in a body of water without creating turbidity and bring life sustaining D.O. levels to the Benthic region of the water bodies we work with to support the Non-Pathogenic Bacteria required to restore the balance in the web of life in an aquatic environment.
As a result, we actually change the trophic index of the water body that we work with from being hyper-eutrophic / eutrophic to oligitrophic, by natural and reproducable / affordable means.
I can’t understand why it is so difficult to get governmental agancies in the U.S.‘s attention, I’ve been trying for 15 years in the Northeast to address these issues. I have projects now with private clientele in the Northeast, The towns I have spent countless hours of wasted time with are inept or corrupt. I can’t think of any other excuse, I am qualified to make this statement, I’ve been the one who has made great sense at town meetings only to have not one return phone call afterwards. As well, to see that immediately following my alternatives to using huge “Environmental” companies’ spraying and dumping herbicides and pesticides to mitigate the “nuicence” variables of eutrophication, I am at witts end with working with governmental agencies. Give me a private citizen or an intelligent Lake Association with a budget to work with any day as far as I’m concerned.
Best Regards, I’d be happy to respond to anyone actually…
Jack Mosel, Owner: Aquatic Restorations,LLC.
moseljack@yahoo.com
(914)260-5678
The idea is not to restore anything. The idea is to gain control of ever possible resourse. If government is the answer, it is indeed a stupid question.