I want you to meet Jonathan Todd, son of John historic, standing next to Hui who has already been introduced. Jonathan, if you can please turn around 360 degrees so we can show who you are. Here we go.
“Thom Hartmann says in Truthout: "If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea. The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what's happening in the whole world."
I Am proud to say we are not following these minus footprints to everywhere, but are beginning here, today, by establishing our step forward to ecologically stabilize our ecological footprints to somewhere, here, in Lyons, in our local world of which we are but one of many intermeshed localized worlds, renewing our faith in regeneration technologies.
In doing this educational day with Jonathan Todd and his chief operations officer Hui Lin, we are confronting ourselves & our habitual reliance on the industrial machines that we climbed onto so long ago, to practice our own best performing forms of Substitute Nature.
Wastewater treatment facilities have charmed statutory towns & cities for generations, with a gleam of new centralized, big municipal economic development. Yet in Lyons for the past 14 years, steps were already taken to design and operate unique methods for bio-reduction of solids by its director Bob Alberts, who unfortunately was killed recently in a plane crash. However, like any monoculture, an industrial system, having less diversity defenses, is continuously prey to breakdown and negative consequences.
Enter Jonathan Todd of JTED, (John Todd Ecological Design), son of John Todd and his 1960’s collaborative processes of creating a lineage of EcoMachines, intricately made up of interacting biological processes, and uniquely organically customizable.
Just as Permaculture design takes great pains to engage with an initially complex ordering of life systems, it goes through its bewildering hoops mainly to establish a work with-and-of-Nature, that creates positive consequences while drastically reducing or eliminating lingering and often augmenting maintenance.
The goal of this day is to have JTED work with the BOT, create a report, & lead into to a second step for a feasibility Study. Then comes the exciting part we are not use to doing: assembling a worthy Collaborative design team of all Stakeholders to do an on-the-ground design process (a Charrette might be that model) for Lyons. Yes, this is truly inspiring for Lyons.
I introduce our three presenters that will report on the various parts of the existing wastewater scenario in Lyons. The first, an Overview of Current Plant and Operations by Jim Blankenship, the second, Steve Wratten, Chair of the Engineering Utilities Board (UEB) will give the WWTP Feasibility Study’s options for the JVA study. Gary Bernhard is also with us here from Honeywell; he has proposed a Performance Contract for the existing Facility. Third presenting is our SFC staff liaison & Town Administrator Victoria Simonsen, who will tell us about the Possibilities and Constraints along our Eastern Gateway Corridor.
Then having heard these vignettes, Jonathan will present his EcoMachine and the beneficial scenarios it can play in the Lyons WasteWater system. Q&A are welcome from all of you here, in between. Please write out your questions on cards provided.
What will happen the rest of the day?
Sites visits from 10:30-4pm followed by a JTED debriefing time and then re-convening
5:30pm in Town Hall for BOT workshop time, to hear EcoMachine assessments of the day, a presentation by Jonathan of his preliminary connecting of the dots, his thoughts & ideas, & suggestions of how to follow-up. We will take Q&A & discussion by the Board, then leave time for Q&A by audience as time permits.
From 6:30-7pm there will be a report from the UEB reiterating their initial recommendations that you can hear, then we continue across the street at 523 5th Ave, 7:30-9pm at my home to honor Jonathan and Hui with a home-cooked meal.
I leave you with an unsolicited comment by a member of our WasteWater Recycle Committee of the Sustainable Futures Commission: “This is by far the greatest & most complex project our town will develop in the next several decades, Maybe in our lifetimes! -Omar Postigo-Martell
Members of the SFC WasteWater Recycle Committee are:
Coco Gordon, Chair
Dan Matsch
Omar Postigo-Martell
Jim Blankenship
Marianne Oursler
Tamara Jarolimek
Dawn Weller
Melissa Good
Sandy Banta, liaison from the Board of Trustees
Victoria Simonsen, Staff Liaison