For Climate, Local Decisions Matter | Falmouth Columns | capenews ... - CapeNews.net

For Climate, Local Decisions Matter | Falmouth Columns | capenews.net
We are greatly concerned about the direction our town is taking with regards to climate change. The select board’s decisions to block SouthWind testing and support the seemingly endless expansion of the sewers are the latest examples. It is widely understood that producing renewable energy reduces greenhouse gas emissions. However, the connection between climate change and construction projects such as sewers are less obvious. Sewer plants are the biggest emitters and resource-wasting facilities of towns and cities across this country. To take climate change seriously we have to develop non polluting, renewable infrastructures, including climate resilient human “waste” infrastructure. An excellent example of such infrastructure can be found in Brattleboro, Vermont, where hundreds of people, already connected to sewers, participate in a voluntary urine diversion program to reduce the amount of nutrients going into the sewer and eventually into their river. Doing so reduces the operating cost of the sewer plant and provides urine fertilizer to farmers. Urine contains 80 percent of the nitrogen and 55 percent of the phosphorus in human waste, these human-excreted nutrients needed to replace energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers. A recent study at the University of Michigan analyzed the effect on a conventional sewer process if less urine went into it. The sewer used less energy, produced less greenhouse gas emissions and had an increased capacity for more homes. Waterless urine diversion fixtures save 4,000 gallons of water per year, or 2,000 gallons when only male urine is diverted. Less water going into the sewer means less effluent out and less need for increased discharge areas or outfall pipes. It costs $300 to $400 to remove one pound of nitrogen at a sewer plant, or $3,000 to $4,000 to remove the approximately 10 pounds of nitrogen a person produces per year. It costs only about $35 per pound with urine diversion infrastructure. Water savings and fertilizer production achieved with urine diversion will reduce that cost even more. Urine diversion fixtures don’t have to be clustered together like sewer connections and don’t have to remove 100 percent of the nitrogen to reach MassDEP target nitrogen reduction. Waterless urinals used by men remove about 40 percent of the nitrogen. When used in three times as many houses as sewered houses, they would remove about the same amount of nitrogen, at a fraction of the cost and impact on the climate. Sewers clustered around estuaries do nothing to reduce pollution from phosphorus in freshwater ponds away from the coast. Distributed urine diversion infrastructure improves water quality in all water bodies. It costs less to install urine diversion infrastructure for 811 homes, complete with urine depots, pasteurization and installation of waterless urinals, than to do just the initial design ($4.5 million) for Falmouth’s next sewer phase of 811 homes. Presently permitted I/A septic systems ($30,000 to $50,000 per parcel) remove only a portion of the nitrogen and none of the phosphorus that pollute freshwater ponds. Earle Barnhart and Hilda Maingay are environmental activists, researchers, educators and board members of the Green Center, a nonprofit environmental organization located at Alchemy Farm in East Falmouth.