Back when I was an acoustician I used to do a lot of design work for wastewater treatment. Why? 'cuz wastewater treatment facilities often smell like shit, which pisses off their neighbors. Except you can't legislate against stink because stink is not something that can be empirically measured. So the neighbors get back against wastewater treatment facilities for being noisy, which is something you can measure with a $2 app for your phone. So a lot of money gets spent on acoustics for wastewater treatment. Anyway. Wastewater treatment is full of delightful bullshit urbanism. Used to call it sludge, right? Can't call it sludge anymore. Actually went to meetings where we had a swear jar for anyone who said "sludge." It's "biosolids." So you don't have sludge tanks, you have biosolids tanks. And it isn't "effluent" it's "deflocculated runoff" or some shit. Do not miss that industry. Altho - I probably wouldn't be sick right now. Healthiest guys I've ever met are the ones that work in wastewater treatment.
My boss and I are looking over a landscape plan the other day and he says to me, "Bioswale? Where I'm from we call those ditches."
OMG. The permaculture mafia has gotten to you. I'm a big fan of the concept but the concept is mostly about controlling desertification. There's a certain segment of prepper hippie that thinks it's the future of agriculture without noting that Sepp Holzer took his dad's 76 acre farm from "provides for the town" to "provides for three restaurants."
Permaculture always made sense to me as being an efficient way to use land but I admittedly know jack all about agriculture except that "omnivore's dilemma" present grass farming as the healthiest, cleanest way to produce meat. I've only watch a lecture or two on permaculture by people promoting it. Any recommended reading on it? I'd guess it's have something to do with only so much soil nutrients available per sqaure foot?
I own Mollison in hardcover and two copies of Tobe Heminway so I'm not exactly a disinterested party... but the goal of Permaculture as put forth by Mollison is "reclaim the desert" and Heminway as "landscaping should provide food and be maintenance-free." Somehow that was interpreted by the preppers as "effortless free food through swale and tree trunks." It's kind of interesting - if you read a book like "Five acres and Independence" you're reading pretty much what the permaculture freaks think of as permaculture; it's basically human-scale agriculture. If you want to see what Mollison was talking about, look to the Negev. Most of Mollison's work was in the Australian outback.