Word: plants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...money from the 1972 Federal Clean Water Act, so state bureaucrats planned a regional sewage system for Arcata and two neighboring cities accused of dumping inadequately treated wastewater into Humboldt Bay. The plan envisioned a network of pipelines carrying sewage from the bay's communities to a central disposal plant. New state legislation banned pumping waste-water into bays and estuaries unless a city's effluents "enhanced" them...
...delay gave everybody time to think. Arcata still needed an alternative disposal system that would "enhance" Humbolt Bay. Its sludge-skimming plant piped the city's wastewater into an oxidation pond (where most microbes are rendered harmless by sunlight), but the runoff no longer met legal standards. Locals knew vaguely that wastewater had some environmental pluses. Humboldt Bay oysters fed on its nutrients, and Professor Allen, a likable tinkerer whom Klippity Klopp calls Crazy George, raised salmon fingerlings in a mix of sea and wastewater. Other ideas emerged. HSU biologist Stan Harris was for a bird sanctuary. Gearheart came...
...said, 'Oh my God!' " He recalls, "We rushed to the site, tramping around in the mud." Their solution: filter the postoxidation pond water through a man-made wetland before piping it into the bay. The process is called polishing. Algae and other potentially harmful microbes cling naturally to swamp plant roots, starting a food chain. Filter-feeding organisms in the marsh water eat them...
Good science as far as it went, but Arcata's thinkers hadn't reckoned with the State of California's political food chain. The city's neighbors still wanted the state system to solve their sewage problems. State bureaucrats believed the city's opposition to the proposed plant was naive and anti- environmentalist. In May of 1977, Arcata approached a regional meeting of the state's Water Quality Control Board and sat for seven hours until allowed to speak during an "open comments" period...
Arcata followed up immediately by coaxing California's Coastal Conservancy into constructing three full-size freshwater marsh ponds, so that a full-size wetlands would be ready by 1981, when the pilot project proved them right. And it worked. The combined marsh and disposal plant finally opened in 1985, costing $3 million less than Arcata's share of the megasystem's original budget. "We declared victory and withdrew from the war," recalls Hauser. Since wars require monuments, the sanctuary has ponds named Hauser, Allen and Gearheart. A saltwater slough where pelicans and cormorants gather is called Klopp Lake. Mount Trashmore...