Ask Little Star: November 2009

The county I live in was recently awarded for being a very "green" county - from what I heard, it was essentially because they cut their kilowatt usage in county buildings. However, in the same flood plain/drain that has been previously mentioned in other posts (see Sept. 6, 2008), the county has shown an extremely un-environmentally conscious side. Where there were trees and grasses and other plant life providing a meager (though still existent) counter to the carbon dioxide emitted all around it, the county authorized a complete "strip" of the land claiming that the plant life interfered with the drainage system. Thus, what was once green (slowly browning as the seasons changed - as nature intended it to), is now stripped bare to the red clay beneath...

What happened to being environmentally conscious? Besides, their argument that the plants were interfering with the draining of storm waters is complete bunk. We've only had that one instance in 2004-2005 where the drain clogged and the plain flooded. Since then, the plant life acted as a natural filter for all the storm water coming in with excess going into the drain.

Hasn't the county heard of reconstructed wetlands? Those are becoming more and more popular as landscaping choices because of its eco-friendly-ness. Basically, a wetland acts as a drainage and filtration system in the wild. The rain water is taken in by the plants and debris such as leaves and dirt are deposited amongst the plants' roots. This debris later is broken down into nutrients that are then absorbed by the plants and used. Reconstructed wetlands are essentially a series of human-created wetlands (or as close as possible, due to their proximity to human buildings, these "wetlands" do not support the amount of animal diversity that natural wetlands do) that eventually drains into a sewage system. Once in the system, the water can be further cleaned (although this takes less time as the water has already been filtered by the plants outside) and used in the building. The same reconstructed wetland system can also be used to filter water coming out from the building - for example: the water from the toilet system can be run through a preliminary filter in the building's sewage system to sort large solids out, then sent through pipes to the reconstructed wetland to filter through the plants down to the building for reuse. This concept greatly reduces the amount of water being used by the building and because the water naturally flows downwards due to gravity, external electricity isn't needed to pump the water through the reconstructed wetland (just to the wetland from the building).

So, rather than stripping the land, maybe the county should allow the land to become a reconstructed wetland that was partially created by nature to aid in the filtration before reaching the main sewage pipes. Regardless of whether or not they actually make it part of a system, it's still just not eco-friendly to cut down all these trees and lowlife.

Upset at the silliness of the county,
Little Star