GatewayRedbirds.com

I must've left off the blue font. Whoops.

Indirect (and direct!) reuse of treated effluent is the next big thing, and already being done in many places in Texas. For the uninitiated, the water you piss heads off to the water treatment plant where it's cleaned and put back into the river. The legal question (that we've already litigated once, and likely will again) is: If a city owns the rights to water, does it still own that water after it's treated at the city's wastewater treatment plant? The answer is yes. So, can you get a permit to treat that piss water, put it back in the river, and take it out further downstream as part of your water? Again, the answer's yes. So the wave of the future is a closed circuit where cities take water out of the river and continuously reuse it.

A fun game for hydro engineers is guessing how many times a water molecule passes through a set of human kidneys on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. In the future, it's going to be more.

_________________

Indirect Effluent would be a good name for a punk rock band. Or maybe Leroy's bluegrass band.

One of the coolest things I have observed in the wilderness is a natural seep area where rainwater was filtered through about 50ft of sand until it hit a layer of dense clay, where it was forced out horizontally into a huge ravine.

I found this in northern Michigan on the Manistee River when I was backpacking. The great thing is that my filter had cracked, and so we were a bit leery (not too much) about using streamwater. Lo and behold , we camped on a bluff above this ravine, so I went down and brought up a few gallons from a rivulet that was about 50 yds from where it emitted from the ravine bank below the sand layer. It was really awesome. The water was fantastically pure.

_________________
Silence is golden.

Thousand times this.

And don't pick the small Bradford Pears/Silver Maples...plant some damn Oak/Elm/Hickory Trees.

I actually like the Bradfords, which do OK here. We have a ton of ash (roughly 1 in 3 city trees), plenty of locust (the honeys and blacks are cool when they get real big) and lots of suffering maples. I really like the ginkgos, but we don't have a lot around. They aren't very good for shade.

We have a 30ft white birch in our back yard that is stunning. Unfortunately it is near it's normal lifespan of 25-30 years, but it seems to be doing great.

_________________
Silence is golden.

Bradfords are softer woods and tend to leave a lot of down branches during St. Louis' wonderful thunderstorms...plus I can't stand the smell of their flowers during the spring.

I'd take that over these giant catalpas that drop giant pointy seed pods all year. I always picking them up.

_________________
Silence is golden.

I'm interested in this whole concept. This guy used to be the "City Designer" for Davenport, and I heard him speak a couple times. Basically, he is a big advocate for making streets and neighborhoods "walkable" - which basically means slowing traffic down a bit, and making pedestrians feel safe crossing the street or walking along it. So it's simple things like lining streets with trees, adding bike lanes, converting one way streets to 2 way, etc.

Davenport has a lot of the same challenges as Chicago. The core of Davenport is just very old. It will take a lot of time and effort to change over a lot of these really old city blocks over to this new way of thinking. The one thing they've done so far is build a median down the center of River Drive. Davenport has park space all along the riverfront (along with the ballpark), so the median is an attempt to make it easier for people to go back and forth across the busy street from the parks to the downtown area.

Closer to my house, there are 2 vacant lots that the city owns. They are the low spot in our neighborhood. The city is trying to work with our neighborhood group to put in some kind of "pocket park" there. We are also looking at gardens and rain barrels for that site. Basically, it would end up being win/win if it works out right. The city is having to pay for snow removal and mowing on these lots right now. They are willing to put up some capital for maybe a small playground, trees, benches, etc. But they are trying to reduce their maintenance costs by asking our group to help with the mowing and stuff. It will be interesting to see how it works out.

_________________

That sounds awesome. When I was younger my Dad and two neighbors bought a very dilapidated property just down the street, tore it down and put up a very small park. It's basically just a couple trees and a bench but people use it. He and the other neighbors take time to mow it themselves. It only takes maybe 10 minutes so it's hardly a big deal. It's way better then having the old abandoned two room house that was there.

Our neighborhood kind of sucks though, no sidewalks anywhere and sadly all the trees were blown down in a storm maybe ten years ago. We've planted a couple Japanese Maples and an Ash tree in our yard but no one else has really done anything. It makes me miss my old neighborhood for sure. The lack of sidwalks is the worst though because it's downright dangerous to walk on the streets here because they are narrow and have ditches on each side of them.

_________________
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell, And I feel like I'm comin' home

http://www.infinite-garage.com

This makes me laugh, because I have lived this.




This is essentially what transpired with our little park, though the Alderman was the impetus. He basically gave our block the park under the condition that we would take care of it. Our landlord is NeighborSpace, part of the Corporation for Public Land (both 501c3 orgs), and our operating entity is Friends of Burling Park. We have raised nearly $8,000 over 3 years for capital improvements, and it has really turned out well.

But it takes a small group of highly motivated people to make this happen. You need grunts like me to mow lawns, pull weeds, prune trees, etc., and people who are good at fundraising, communications, and web promotion. It's a lot of work. You won't always get people who will thank you (some fool will always gripe about some decision), and most people will kind of take the whole thing for granted. But it's worth the effort to improve your neighborhood.

_________________
Silence is golden.

I don't disagree with this statement.