Veins of Life Watershed Society

A thing of grace and beauty

https://abundantedge.com/bruce-kania/ We’ve covered a ton of angles to this topic already, from fixing broken water cycles on the land with keyline planning and... earthworks, to marine ecosystem restoration through conservation and even farming. In today’s episode I got to speak with Bruce Kania of Floating Island International which developed their patented Biohaven floating island technology as a solution to algae-ridden and nutrient impared waterways since 2005. Since then they´ve launched over 9,000 island systems worldwide as solutions to a variety of problems facing contaminated water. In this interview Bruce breaks down the chemical and biological processes that happen in the water when there’s a heavy nutrient load and how it affects the balance of oxygen and the lifeforms that depend on it. He tells me how the floating islands that he’s helped to develop work to cycle the nutrients of polluted waterways back into the food web that then fosters the beneficial life forms that are emergent elements of healthy water ecosystems and that mature to help the whole system and surrounding ecology to thrive. We also take a look at the case study of Fish Fry Lake in Montana and how it’s gone from a polluted lake with regular algae blooms to become the most productive wild fishery in Montana where people can even swim and snorkel! Be sure to stick around till the end of the interview as Bruce explains just how big the potential of these floating wetland systems is as he’s looking to develop inhabited floating islands that help to filter and clean the great plastic garbage patches in the Pacific ocean and the possibility of creating floating solar farms that function as new real estate as well.

Vertical Distribution of Microplastics in the Water Column and Surficial Sediment from the Milwaukee River Basin to Lake Michigan Peter L. Lenaker*, Austin K. Baldwin, Steven R. Corsi, Sherri A. Mason, Paul C. Reneau, and John W. Scott Abstract... Microplastic contamination was studied along a freshwater continuum from inland streams to the Milwaukee River estuary to Lake Michigan and vertically from the water surface, water subsurface, and sediment. Microplastics were detected in all 96 water samples and 9 sediment samples collected. Results indicated a gradient of polymer presence with depth: low-density particles decreased from the water surface to the subsurface to sediment, and high-density particles had the opposite result. Polymer identification results indicated that water surface and subsurface samples were dominated by low-density polypropylene particles, and sediment samples were dominated by more dense polyethylene terephthalate particles. Of the five particle-type categories (fragments, films, foams, pellets/beads, and fibers/lines), fibers/lines were the most common particle-type and were present in every water and sediment sample collected. Fibers represented 45% of all particles in water samples and were distributed vertically throughout the water column regardless of density. Sediment samples were dominated by black foams (66%, identified as styrenebutadiene rubber) and to a lesser extent fibers/lines (29%) with approximately 89% of all of the sediment particles coming from polymers with densities greater than 1.1 g cm3. Results demonstrated that polymer density influenced partitioning between the water surface and subsurface and the underlying surficial sediment and the common practice of sampling only the water surface can result in substantial bias, especially in estuarine, harbor, and lake locations where water surface concentrations tend to overestimate mean water column concentrations. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b03850

The Lake Erie Bill of Rights establishes the lake’s right to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve. That means the lake now has the right to file a lawsuit if it’s been harmed just like you.

And the fecal coming from the storm drains in the Gorge and Harbour, is healthy for you according to Victoria Council