TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/032089/03208900.057

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                                                                                AMERICAN IDEAS:, Page 10

Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary


A Swamp Makes Waste To Be Sweet Again  Professors Allen and
Gearheart design a wetlands as a natural sewage-treatment plant

By James Willwerth


    On a foggy afternoon in tiny Arcata, Calif., strollers
ambling through coastal marshland seem caught in the colors of
an impressionist canvas. As they walk past, sandpipers and
pelicans patrol the edge of Humboldt Bay. Just inland, a
freshwater swamp is alive with thousands of mallard, teal and
pintail ducks. Egrets and herons poke among islands of leathery
bulrush. Joggers are framed against fields of daisies and Queen
Anne's lace. One walker, former City Councilman Sam Pennisi,
proudly points to a sewage pipe spewing dark water into the bay.
"This," he tells a visitor, "is what home-rule democracy is all
about!" Hold on, Sam. Mixing sewage and wildlife, then bragging
about it in the name of democracy, doesn't sound like common
sense. But Arcata (pop. 14,600), a timber and fishing town in
Northern California populated by a curious mix of rural
curmudgeons, refugees from suburbia, and college students, often
thinks differently about things. Pennisi and his companions,
Humboldt State University professor George Allen and HSU
environmental engineer Robert Gearheart, are showing off an
environmental vision they and others championed for more than
a decade: a wildlife habitat and public park that help dispose
of the city's sewage.

    If the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary sounds like the
Whole Earth catalog gone bonkers, listen carefully. Sewage and
wetlands wildlife, like each other when the sewage is free of
industrial metals, Arcata has found. Since this is the case in
most small and midsize American cities, combining them is
technically easy. The swamp substitutes for some of the
high-cost stages of sewage treatment. But take caution from
weary Arcatans: skip the politics. The city's sewage saga sounds
more like Gilbert and Sullivan than John Muir's diaries.

    The story began 15 years ago. California was fat with grant
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.

    But Arcatans began to worry about environmental overkill.
The idea of sewer pipes running amuck through bucolic farm and
forest lands frightened them. And the system's budget, a mix of
federal grants and local assessments, ballooned to $56 million.
Frank Klopp, Arcata's gravel-voiced public-works director,
concluded that maintenance costs might force him to double the
city's sewage rates. Klopp, known as "Klippity" in a city hall
addicted to folksy nicknames, took himself to the mayor's
office. "We really ought to get out," he growled. Gradually,
others agreed. The bay's tugboat captains were worried that a
submerged pipe might snag their anchors. City Councilman Dan
Hauser, now a state assemblyman, feared an invasion of
developers along a pipe near Highway 101. Then a citizens'
committee in nearby Manila, a residential district near a
planned pipeline, sued and stalled the project for nearly two
years.

    The 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 in as an expert on oxidation ponds.

    City-hall workers naturally dubbed their new professorial
task force "Fishy" (Allen), "Tweety" (Harris, the bird man) and
"Blue Eyes" (Gearheart). Another nickname mattered: an abandoned
dump near the oxidation pond was called Mount Trashmore. No one
put it all together until Allen probed his students one day. A
student "who slept all the time" raised his hand. No problem,
the student said. "Just run it (the wastewater) around Mount
Trashmore."

    Allen remembers a lightning bolt. "I ran out of class to
get Bob, who 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.

    The board demanded a feasibility study of Arcata's proposal
in three weeks. "That was war," recalls Gearheart. Such studies
normally cost thousands of dollars and take months to produce.
But three weeks later, after Gearheart wrote and volunteers made
copies all night long at city hall, a Greyhound bus took the
study away at dawn. The board promptly rejected it. Allen,
Gearheart and Councilman Hauser spent nearly two years flying
to regional meetings to counter further state objections while
they appealed. Finally, the city, through some adroit
politicking, won permission from state officials for a pilot
project.

    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 has evolved into a wildflower-rich
meadow. Standing by his pond, Allen recalls that first day he
and Gearheart tramped through the mud with the idea exploding
in their minds. "We flushed a deer out of that spot," he says.
"It seemed like a good omen." An uncommon one, at least.