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+--- Thread: Why worry about Fukushima! (/showthread.php?tid=12828)
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - TomK - 12-19-2013
I'm trying to picture all the old sugar cane fields full of containers growing stuff and am having a hard time with that as well as planting ferns and eventually removing them all to get rid of the arsenic (yes, arsenic doesn't break down, as Rob mentions it's an element, but it can be removed albeit in a very expensive or time consuming way). We could get bulldozers out there to rip the topsoil and then find a way to replace it, but nothing like this is going to happen soon. However, a quick question and something I really ought to know. Who owns the former sugar cane fields? Or at least most of them.
BTW, bananahead - nice link. I enjoyed reading that. There is so much nonsense being posted about the effects of Fukushima disaster on Hawaii and the US west coast. It was nice to read something rational for a change. Like the author of the article I noticed something wrong about the Pacific maps he highlighted, especially the one that showed the Japan Tsunami propagation throughout the Pacific ocean but using it to falsely represent the distribution of radioactive nuclei. I think I mentioned on another thread here some time ago that there are a whole bunch of PhD physicists on the island, some rather distinguished ones, and you don't see them running away because of the radiation from that disaster. Let's remember, it's horrible for the people in Japan close to Fukushima, but it won't be for us.
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - kalakoa - 12-20-2013
I believe Shipman is/was the current/former owners of some/all of the contaminated land.
What's less clear is how much arsenic remains in what are now "private" subdivisions.
Seems like grounds for some awesome legal action, if there are any lawyers who would dare to fight both Shipman and County.
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - VancouverIslander - 12-20-2013
quote:
Originally posted by Bullwinkle
We have the water - some thing the rest of the world is running out of in a hurry - ours is clean at that.
Even if we have to do agriculture in containers or hydroponics ....
A good percentage of no. europes food production comes from green houses - and we do not need to run thousands of kilowatts to grow tomatoes - a big advantage to some locations that manage to produce a good percentage of their needs at latitude 50 or further north - ie iceland....
In addition to the benefits you state, the high rainfall is already remediating the arsenic levels in the soil through leeching. The arsenic is slowly but surely making it's way into the ocean.
Now, that said, arsenic needs to be in pretty high quantities in our diets to affect our health. I would doubt that you would be risking ill health buying produce at any local markets.
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - csgray - 12-20-2013
There is a big difference between lands that were owned by sugar companies and lands that were used to grow cane. The former sugar cane growing lands are the areas with deep soil. Most of the private subdivisions were built on sugar company owned lands that were considered too unproductive for commercial agriculture, so were never used to grow cane. For example the Shipmans ran cattle on parts of HPP but never grew sugar there.
When I was teaching at Waters of Life we had a "farm" program up on Ala Loop, on arsenic contaminated lands. At that time I was told that the risk to children was getting the soil in their mouths, but that the arsenic would not be taken up by the plants and the produce we grew was safe to eat. Arsenic is a fairly stable chemical, and occurs naturally in some areas. I lived on a farm in the Lorane Valley in Oregon where there was so much arsenic in the well water that it was unsafe to drink on a daily basis, but King Estates Vineyards produces award winning certified Organic wines there.
What I remember from conversations with a friend who was an inspector for the Tilth certification program is that the "Organic" designation usually refers to current practices after a relatively short transition period (7-10 years) of not using any chemicals in farming. So the former cane lands probably could be used for organic farming, especially cattle grazing and other livestock uses.
I doubt there could be a successful law suit over the arsenic contamination in subdivisions, even if they were built on actual former cane growing lands, because the arsenic is the result of common legal agricultural practices of the time. There are subdivisions all over the country that have been built on top of farm land that used all sorts of chemicals that are now banned, if the courts started letting people sue for that it would be endless. Places like Love Canal were able to sue because the chemical dumping that went on was done illegally under the laws at the time, and covered up when people tried to find out what was making their kids sick.
Carol
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - Rob Tucker - 12-20-2013
One interesting aspect of the sugar cane operations was that harvesting the cane, at least in later years, involved heavy equipment dozing up the cane and transporting it by rail from Pahoa and other locations to the mill in Keaau.
Harvesting in that manner included transporting a lot of soil. In Keaau that soil was washed off the cane into channels where it flowed downhill and dried out. Those soils were then spread on the Shipman lands nearby (Keauu, makai of the bypass). That land was previously pahoehoe and is now very busy ag land. This all makes good sense but also represented large tracts of Puna being strip mined for the soils which were relocated to the Keaau area in the process. There was a planned hotel in Keaau which was abandoned fairly recently because of the high arsenic concentrations at that site.
There must have been a massive rat problem for the arsenic to be employed in the manner it was. At the time it was likely considered an environmental solution.
The question I raise, and I don't know the answer, is how does one promote large scale organic farming on these arsenic tainted lands? Presently, like a lot of Big Island problems, the issue is basically ignored hoping it will just go away. Arsenic doesn't just go away.
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - kalakoa - 12-20-2013
Rob has that one right: ignore the problems, they will just go away on their own.
People will get tired of it and move away, or they'll die prematurely from the poisons.
The big landowners will still have plenty.
Curious about the hotel, though: permits pulled in 2004, newspaper article in 2005 says Shipman will pay for site cleanup, guessing the economy collapsed after that. Will that hotel ever be built? Jobs and taxes, you know.
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - Bullwinkle - 12-20-2013
seems to me that:
If the arsenic is absorbed from the soil - over a period of time it would be removed. The research seems to be in the areas of what plants remove the most of the target element or pollutant (fukashima)
If the arsenic is not absorbed through plants from the soil - then it should not be an issue .....
interesting to have some data as to how much is there today - and how much there was - say 20 years ago.
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - csgray - 12-20-2013
There is a lot of bioremediation work being done in the parts of Eastern Europe that were the toxic dumping ground for the Soviet Union using mushrooms to decontaminate the soil. Dr. Allan Kaplan from Oregon did a lot of the initial research, but I am not sure what has happened with it recently. As far as greenhouse growing or hydroponics goes that can be done anywhere, even places without soil like the lava lands. In 1982 the Solar Chimney Manzanares was built in Spain that also had extensive produce growing under the collector. I always thought Hawaii would be a great place for that technology, especially on the lava lands which heat up so much during the day, the turbines of the solar chimney also turn in reverse at night when the land beneath it cools, so you get power generation both during the day and at night.
Carol
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - gogould - 12-21-2013
Great thread. Here is a link for Fukushima news that has some continuity to it. http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/
RE: Why worry about Fukushima! - dragon2k - 01-03-2014
Is there any bioremediation happening at Fukushima yet?