Editor’s note: This commentary is by Michael Bald, who is a parent and self-employed resident of Royalton. His company Got Weeds? targets non-native invasive plant species with strictly non-chemical methods. A biologist by degree, he was a founding member of the sustainability team on the Green Mountain National Forest until departing in 2011 to launch Got Weeds?.
[I]t was interesting to read Sandra Levine’s thoughts on climate change (VTDigger) and Alicia Freese’s article a day later (Seven Days) on the trouble with dirt, contaminated dirt in urban areas more precisely.
I first have to disagree strongly with Ms. Levine’s opening sentence. Her conclusion is fine, and worthy and hopefully inspiring to many, but taking action to tackle climate change – does that really come naturally to Vermonters? No, absolutely not, not even in the ballpark. I do believe that Vermonters are more conscientious of their treasured landscape than citizens in many places, but I do not see a collective triumph of leadership. Way too early to pat ourselves on the back.
I prove my point with three micro-stories/examples.
First … leaf-blowers. Really? What, the wind doesn’t know how to do what it’s been doing for millennia? I can sympathize with folks who get windmill noise or fighter jet blasts, but not when they bust out at 8 a.m. to push leaves around. I don’t even know where to start with that …
Second … let’s talk about some of the larger “litter,” the shrubby, brushy variety. As we approach spring cleaning season, thousands of personal burn piles will convert tons of future soil into ash and carbon dioxide. I had riverfront property for one night during Tropical Storm Irene; I saw all the thrashed and gnarly tree trunks draped about the landscape. Again, plenty of sympathy for folks who lost acreage; but why would we later turn and burn the very material that the river carried in? All that vegetative material would break down into soil over time and would have served to protect jagged riverbanks from future high water. But no, we don’t like the look of it. So, as with the leaves, we clean it up to our liking and make burn piles visible from space. Few Vermonters apparently have the patience or the skill to build good functional brush piles. They can be a real positive when compacted down into low spots to decompose or when piled more loosely to serve as habitat for ground-nesting birds. Vegetation of any kind and in any form is a resource that so many people on the planet have sparse access to; it should be viewed as a resource not an eyesore. Perhaps our abundance blinds us.
Item Three … remote car starters. I walked across the National Life parking lot in January and saw multiple cars with engines running but no drivers. No big deal until I retraced my route 10 minutes later and saw the same cars, still chugging away and still no drivers. Is this a reflection on the folks at the company or the government agency that works in the building? I’d say no, but it does highlight clearly – poor people are not the only ones cooking the planet and causing all the destruction. Can we not suffer even a moment of discomfort? The word “pampered” comes to mind.
Why would landfilling dirt make any more sense than using a loud machine to blow leaves around or putting the torch to a nice pile of future soil?
But yes, many good and positive things HAVE happened in Vermont over the past decades. Change is coming slowly, as mindsets evolve. So I was intrigued to read about the challenge posed by so much dirty dirt in Burlington and St. Albans and other urban sites. I think it’s praiseworthy that the mayor and state agencies and activists are all working to address contamination in the interest of public health. But here’s where I have to say my piece.
Why would landfilling dirt make any more sense than using a loud machine to blow leaves around or putting the torch to a nice pile of future soil? Here we sit with a huge technical challenge, one that impacts the long-term health of many many people, and we sidestep the opportunity. We toss the contaminated dirt from one hole into another. Why, so we can deal with it later? Aren’t future generations dealing with enough just from Vermont Yankee? I’m all about efficiency in my work, and to have a pile of dirt up out of the ground, accessible and ready for cleansing, why wouldn’t I see the task through? All that money going into transport and dumping fees could go into research on solutions. When did we come up with money for throwing away dirty dirt? Here we cannot even afford to budget something good for the climate like Vermont Interactive Television, but we can afford to throw millions into a hole? Wow, I’m stunned.
I look at all the smart kids out there, and I think “give them the money to come up with solutions.” We can put robots on Mars but we can’t figure out how to clean dirt? That is beyond troubling. I told a transportation official last year that we need to be much more careful with fill dirt for future road-building. It is often laced with invasive species, some of which are BIG trouble. That’s when I learned most fill is brought in by contractors, so do we even know where the dirt is coming from? I’m guessing they go for the cheapest material available. Maybe it’s not a big deal, but if Vermont were to figure out ways to rehabilitate contaminated soil, there would surely be a market for it. I envision something like a compost facility where material is actively managed and specialized bacteria are allowed to do their thing. And think of all the sequestered carbon; healthy soil is a positive for the planet.
The answers are out there.
I will close by saying that EPA is not the answer. That agency has been troubled and underfunded for decades; research into acceptable thresholds is not a solution. Many good people work at EPA, but the agency has served industry and profit for a long time, and the contaminants now present are the result of lax safety reviews and the pure profit agenda. For EPA to come in now and save the day is just a slap in the face, whether in regard to the lake or to a pile of dirt.
The answers are out there.
Vermont has the capacity to find those answers, as stated by Ms. Levine and as pursued by several folks in leadership positions. Vermont has long chosen “cheap and easy” over “difficult and challenging.” The examples highlighted by Ms. Freese state as much. Cleaning soil is a climate change opportunity and an innovation opportunity. Taking the easy way out shows no faith in our present problem-solvers and no respect for creative minds of the future.
The answers are out there.
