Bay Area Youth Environmental Coalition
Bringing Together the Bay Area's Youth Serving Environmental
The Bay Area Youth Environmental Coalition is a group of environmental focused organizations that serve youth in the Bay Area. This group was formed to provide a place for sharing resources, events, and ideas to better serve the youth in our networks and provide them with information from diverse groups.
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Nov 29, 2007
Updated: Nov 13, 2009
Membership: Open
Semi-Private
Comments (1 - 9 of 9)
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I'm in, I have this garden going off the hook right now and can't hardly give enough away. Soon I'll have a lot of saved seeds as well. Let me know when it gets going. Thanks for starting this up.
Sean |
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I am creating a few links for you to go to if you would like to learn a little more about the principles of permaculture. These resources can help clarify and expand upon what we covered on Monday, June23,2008. There's more so please, add your own.
Articles/Websites http://www.permacultureprinciples.com/ - basics of permaculture http://www.holmgren.com.au/ - go to his writings page
Permaculture Sites http://www.permacultureportal.com/ - beautiful permaculture homestead of the Bullock brothers http://www.pathtofreedom.com/ - Dervais family in Pasadena http://www.regenerativedesign.org/ - Great place for a lot of permaculture related workshops
Listserv https://www.arashi.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/lapg - Keep up to date with the LAPC Guild Listserv |
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I am sure you are looking into moisture condensers for the purpose of drinking water, but I had an observation yesterday morning that fits along with this topic.
I live close to the coast in Malibu. We often get marine influenced weather where I live. In this one spot we have planted a few coast redwoods that are over 10 years old now. The morning saw a typical low level marine layer that held a lot of moisture. The redwoods were acting as a condenser and caused droplets of water to fall from its leaves. The air all around the redwoods felt more moist than other spots in the yard. This led me to think, with the right plantings, maybe we can create more moist microclimates that harvest the mist naturally and minimize the need for irrigation. It would be great to see more plantings established that take advantage of this scenario.
I hope this helps in another sense. Sean |
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City of SM encourages Rainwater harvesting -- may not support you directly but they encourage you.
Sarah |
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if the focus is on demonstrating a system, code-compliant or not,
it seems that if this is NOT an illegal activity, it would be great to
see what the folks from the Bay Area can show us all in July.
if
there is a parallel goal to update the codes allowing for lower-cost
and/or alternatively-designed systems, perhaps folks would be more
supportive AFTER they've been involved with a demo.
however,
i personally am not in favor of breaking the law or generating furor
and controversy as the first step in building community support for
greywater code revisions. I'm all for citizen activism, but this issue
doesn't seem to warrant civil disobedience. if geofrey is correct, now
may be the time to work within the system rather than attempting to
by-pass it.
perhaps in addition to consulting with a group like rewater.com,
we might look to the city of Santa Monica for support on the issue.
the city has conducted research into the costs, safety and
conservational aspects of greywater usage and i'm sure someone from the
Sustainable City program (at Dean Kubani's office) would be available
to help in some way.
Conor
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I was looking to do a lo-cost do-it-yourself greywater demo in Topanga
a few years ago. I was ultimately dissuaded from pursuing this,
despite some local enthusiasm, for I am an employee of the Resource
Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains; for us to sponsor
an "illegal" installation was problematic despite its potential value
in stream water quality improvements, water conservation and re-use
etc. The irony is that we (RCD) would love people to install these
greywater systems, especially when it involves conversion of daylit
"pipe to creek" greywater drains, amazingly still quite common (and
illegal) up there. We are a non-regulatory agency, and favor solutions
over punishment. I (unofficially) say "Go for it!" ----S
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It’s important to establish new rules for laws that are decades old now. Darren’s suggestion here is a good one:
I would consider it a legitimate option, for example, to intentionally publicize the workshop, expect hassle and possibly legal action from whatever health department or dept of building and safety has jurisdiction, and use any such attention and controversy to attract media attention and publicize the stupidity of California greywater laws as part of an effort to effect change. However, as an architect that spends too much time getting permits for building, I believe now is a great opportunity to rewrite the code. With schwarzenegger’s announcement of the drought, and Villaraigosa’s ‘green’ tendencies, we could work to show a way for Angelenos to more simply install grey water use. In fact we’ll have to as an unsustainable city. For example, Mike Reynolds whom I worked with, has perfected systems that have lasted decades. (www.earthship.org) Wouldn’t it be awesome if with the help of the guerrillas, we could raise the issue and prove a new system that is codeworthy and make it viable (read; sustainable) for these systems to go into affect citywide. Geofrey PS Here’s a website that promises a to code grey water system for less than $5000. www.Rewater.com Perhaps they could consult with all this. |
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Hi All,
It should be noted that it's illegal in California to install
greywater systems that aren't permitted, and that California law
requires holding tank(s) and pump(s) that make installation expensive
and systems unwieldy to operate and maintain. I know of only one
permitted system in Southern California, and it took at least a couple
of years and about $50,000 to install. There are estimated to be at
least hundreds of illegal systems operating in Southern California.
For any host of such a workshop installation, the decision should
be made in advance to either comply with the law or intentionally break
it. I would consider it a legitimate option, for example, to
intentionally publicize the workshop, expect hassle and possibly legal
action from whatever health department or dept of building and safety
has jurisdiction, and use any such attention and controversy to
attract media attention and publicize the stupidity of California
greywater laws as part of an effort to effect change. For at least two
years I've been discreetly looking for a client who would be interested
in working with me to create some furor over greywater or composting
human waste. At minimum, anyone who hosts such greywater workshop
installation should understand that unless such an installation
complies with California law (and my understanding is that all
gravity-fed, intelligently designed greywater systems are currently ill
egal), that there could be legal action, fines, an order to remove the
system, etc. Again at miniumum, until laws change, any homeowner should
expect to remove an unpermitted greywater system to bring the house
back up to code to pass inspection prior to being able to sell it, or
to do so within 30 days at any time based upon a legal order.
There's nothing illegal about doing a demo, so a workable
compromise might be to set up a washer with a piece of wall or plywood
as a stand-in in a yard or at a community garden to demo a setup. This
wouldn't be as fun as doing a permanent house install, and connecting
to water and power to get the demo functioning might be difficult, but
it would have the distinct added feature of being legal.
Projecto Jardin, a community garden in East LA, was interested
last summer in my doing a greywater installation demo from a sink
onsite to plants as a workshop and we never worked out the details.
They might still be interested. I'm connected to many groups and
hundreds of people throughout Southern CA who are interested in
sustainability and related issues, and might be able to find a location
if no one from the immediate mailing volunteers. I would consider it
important to define in advance what the position will be on legality
and whether or not the installation would be seen as a possible
opportunity to challenge idiotic laws and possibly attract controversy
and media attention.
Darren Butler
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Highlights from the Biodynamic Compost Workshop
On Sunday, August 17, 2008 we had a fantastic Biodynamic Compost workshop led by Jack McAndrew. Biodynamic compost is the premeir compost, rich in the life forces that make soil come alive. It was a simple process. Traditionally, it would be a mix of 1 ton cow manure (1 pickup truck load), some alfalfa hay (alfalfa roots reach down almost 40ft into the ground, mining precious minerals vital to the compost pile and your garden), kitchen scraps, some fresh compost to act as a starter, as well as a biodynamic prep that you can buy from the Josephine Porter institute in Virginia (http://www.jpibiodynamics.org/). When we made the compost we used horse manure and available organic matter that we can find. It all works in the long run, but the premeir compost is made with the materials described.
I forget the exact dimensions but ideally you want it somewhere near 3 ft wide, 10ft long, 3-5 ft high. The layering process started off with some rough material (coarser leaves, small twigs), some water, manure, sprinkle of biodynamic prep, alflafa, water, manure, water, straw, water, compost, biodynamic prep, alfalfa, water, etc. Each layer is about 2" thick, spread evenly. As you can tell there is a lot of water involved. The pile needs to be like a wet sponge and in our climate, that is where most people go wrong. So make sure that pile is watered.
I am sure I missed a lot, I have added some handouts that were available at the workshop for those of you who did not get any. They are located in the File Library section below on the left hand side. PLEASE ADD TO ANYTHING I MAY HAVE MISSED. THANK YOU.