Tawei Liao

Liquid Assets

Liquid Assets: The Story of Our Water Infrastructure is a documentary aired on PBS about water infrastructure.  I saw it and got hooked!  The last time I got this excited about a documentary was when Commanding Heights first aired.

The program is 90 minutes long.  It goes through the three systems of water:

1. drinking water
2. waste water
3. storm water

I have done quite a bit of reading on the drinking water and waste systems already so I knew a lot of the material.  But still I was fascinated by the history of the water infrastructure in New York and Philadelphia.  What I was most interested in was the storm water system.

LA River

The case study is Los Angeles, the city I grew up in.  Growing up in LA I didn’t think much about the storm drains and the concrete flood control channels.   Most people have seen  Los Angeles River in movies.  Lots of action movies like Terminator 2 have scenes filmed there.  The Los Angeles River’s sole purpose is to carry storm water out to the ocean.

Why is so much water going into storm drains and the runoff channels in the first place?  Because the city full of concrete!  Sprawl creates need for paved road and parking lots and strip malls.  With so much concrete and pavement, very little water goes back into the ground.  If a big storm dumps a lot of rain, flood happens.  That is why Los Angeles created this huge network of storm drains.

The city avoids floods but the ocean becomes a dumping ground. Along with the storm water, it also carries all the wastes and pollutants throughout the city into the ocean.  Soil and rock in the ground act as a natural filter.  If rain water is absorbed by the ground, underground aquifers are recharged.  That is not happening because the way the city developed.

This is a fascinating program on water infrastructure.  I highly recommend that you buy the DVD if your PBS channel is not airing reruns of the program.

Water is life.  The more you know about it, the more you will value Earth’s most precious resource.

The Joys of Worm Composting

I have kept a worm compost pile for over ten years.  I first learned about composting in college through my friend Paul. He started a compost pile in the backyard of the co-op where we lived.  That particular compost was a big failure due to other residents dumping random garbage into the compost bin.  It was an “aerobic” compost pile, meaning a compost that mixes the right amount browns and greens and water in order to produce heat to break down the waste.  If you change the mixture, the pile will not heat up and nothing will happen.  That was my introduction to composting.  I learned what not to do.

We eat a lot of fruits and vegetables every day so we have a lot of kitchen scraps. Banana peels, apple cores, cucumber peels, watermelon skin, etc, etc, etc.  If all this waste goes into the garbage bin directly it will probably never be reused again.  Think about it.  The waste goes into a plastic bag.  The garbage truck hauls it to the dump where it is buried along with other non-organic garbage like plastic or styrofoam.  How can my banana peel decompose and become part of the soil again?  It can’t.  That is why I started a worm composting bin.  So that our food waste can biodegrade in our backyard and become fertilizer for other plants.

My compost bin is the “Biostack” made by Smith & Hawken.  Unfortunately the parent company of Smith & Hawken, Scotts Miracle-Gro, has dropped the brand and closed all Smith & Hawken stores.  The Biostack has been discontinued.  Don’t worry, there are many other types of compost bins out there.

Compost Bin

The big advantage of worm composting over aerobic composting is that there is less maintenance.  You do not have to worry about composting failures due to improper mixture of browns and greens.  With a worm compost pile, just dump your kitchen scraps in.  The worms will eat them and do the rest.

The City Farmer web site has the best step-by-step instructions on how to start a worm composting bin.  There is a photo slide show also.

I purchased the red wiggler composting worms online.  They are sold by the pound and there are hundreds of worms in a bag.  The worms can survive the trip through the US Postal Service system just fine.  You only have to purchase a couple of pounds of worms once to start your pile.  If you feed them well, they will multiple!

I put in about three pounds of kitchen scraps into the pile every day.  Below is a picture of what it looks like inside.  You should only put plant matter into the pile.  Do not put in cooked leftovers or any animal by product.

Compost Bin Inside

If you add that much organic matter into the pile every day, the pile will become soggy and the worms will not be that effective at eating the scraps.  To balance the mixture, add dry brown material like dry leaves or shredded paper. Newspaper or plain paper; no glossy paper though.

Because my compost pile is big, I use a pitch fork to churn the pile around once a week.  If you have a smaller bin, you should still churn the pile with a small garden shovel.  The worms need fresh air.  Worm composting works best if the pile is churned.  Here is a close up look at my little red worms.  Click on the image for a larger picture.

Composting Red Worms

I never follow the “harvesting” instructions. Trying to separate the worms from the compost is a very messy business. Instead when my pile gets too full, I start putting scraps into just one side of the bin. The worms will figure out where the food is and move to that area. After a week, I scoop out the compost material on the other side and add it to my container plants directly. Some worms will get caught. But that is okay. There are plenty of worms left in the bin. And there will be more if you keep adding food every day.