{"id":2041,"date":"2011-08-17T14:30:29","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T18:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=2041"},"modified":"2011-08-17T14:37:56","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T18:37:56","slug":"2041","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=2041","title":{"rendered":"Urban Wetlands: Using Mother Nature to Clean Up After People"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Diane Ackerman, NEW YORK TIMES, August 15, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

\"urban<\/a> \u201cWastewater Treatment Plant\u201d may not sound like a scenic destination. But some ecologically minded towns have been designing a new breed of wildlife preserve, one that gives recycling a lively twist. Instead of dumping treated water, they return it to nature as the essence of an ecosystem that offers food and habitat to animals. Migrating and native birds find a niche, entangled communities of plants and insects take up residence and a hodgepodge of wild animals bustles in.<\/p>\n

As a result, city dwellers needn\u2019t travel far for an interlude of wilderness to refresh their habit-dulled senses and reorient their inner compass. Strolling, gawking, sitting \u2014 at times camera-clicking \u2014 humans become one more changing feature in the perpetual tableau.<\/p>\n

A favorite preserve of mine is the Wakodahatchee Wetlands in suburban Delray Beach, Fla., (Wakodahatchee means \u201ccreated waters\u201d in Seminole). On a boardwalk raised about 10 feet above any hazard, one can watch an alligator gliding among the bulrushes, fish defending their mud nests from turtles, ducks and teals dabbling, whiskered otters catching whiskered sail-finned catfish.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re lucky, you might see a patch of water fizzing like frying diamonds in the sun \u2014 where a male gator is bellowing in a bass too low for human ears. You might spot a giant apparition atop a tall evergreen, as an endangered wood stork displays its distinctive bald head and long curved beak.<\/p>\n

One-hundred-and-forty species of birds broadcast on every channel at Wakodahatchee, from a pitying of collared doves to a pandemonium of monk parakeets. Red-nosed moorhens add trumpeting, clucking and cackling. Pig frogs loudly grunt like their namesakes. Courting roseate spoonbills play the castanets of their bills. Red-winged blackbirds spout their buzzwords.<\/p>\n

Black and brown anhingas regularly perch atop lone rocks or dead branches, still as art-deco statuettes, wings outspread. Unlike many other birds, their feathers don\u2019t shed water, so they can grow easily waterlogged. Drying feathers in the sun, the anhingas look like skewed crosses adorning the marshes.<\/p>\n

What at first seems a flush of algae, or a pointillist mural of sun-flecked water, is only chartreuse duckweed. This simple aquatic plant floats everywhere on slower moving waters, offering food to birds, shade to frogs and fish, and a warm blanket to alligators and small fry. One day it may also provide a cheap source of protein for humans (it\u2019s already eaten as a vegetable in parts of Asia) or a cheap fount of biofuel that powers cars while filtering carbon dioxide from the air. At Wakodahatchee, duckweed helps to purify the water, and rarely blooms, but when it does, it sprouts the tiniest flower.<\/p>\n

A similar panorama greets visitors behind fashionable waste treatment plants around the country. What an admirable trend. Our planet\u2019s web of life is so fragile that one can\u2019t afford to be a snob about reclaimed land or mind why a business goes green.<\/p>\n

For instance, pharmaceutical companies \u2014 including giants like Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb \u2014 are engaged in high stakes bio-prospecting in some of the world\u2019s most endangered rain forests. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cities and towns are finding that cleaning water and recycling can be done by taking a page out of nature’s book — like using the earth to filter dirty water instead of building an industrial waste-water processing plant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,69],"tags":[1321,1318,1323,1320,1317,1319],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2043,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions\/2043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}