AMERICAN IDEAS:, Page 10Arcata Marsh and Wildlife SanctuaryA Swamp Makes Waste To Be Sweet Again Professors Allen andGearheart design a wetlands as a natural sewage-treatment plantBy 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.
