The other dam-builders

There are two kinds of dam-builders – those that have two feet and those that have four. This report is about the four-footed ones.

Early after Europeans began populating North America beavers here went into decline thanks largely to fashion trends. Their fur was valued largely by hatmakers here and back in the Old Country.

There was also some culinary interest, the ultimate consequence being that the animal was almost entirely eradicated before animal protection and other conservation impulses turned things around in the 20th century – ultimately to the chagrin of settlers, roadbuilders and farmers whose own lives can be disrupted by ponds that show up where they aren’t planned.

Then, too, beavers tend to spread water-borne diseases, principally giardiasis, a diarrheal affliction carried by microscopic parasites that live in their intestines. Hence the term “Beaver Fever.”

From these inconveniences has emerged an industry in how to control beavers. Search the Internet for “How to Control Beavers” and prepare yourself for a lot of reading and also lessons in how resilient these mammals can be.

A study in Tennessee found that after hundreds of beavers were removed from one wetland area, an equal number moved back in within two years. As for the idea of demolishing beaver dams, the animals are quick to rebuild.

Hence, a wide range of alternative steps, including habitat alteration (meaning, remove the kinds of trees that beavers like to eat), fencing, repellants, frightening devices (firecrackers and strobes), trapping and shooting.

I’m inclined to the non-lethal solutions, among them water flow control devices that consist largely of underwater pipes that people install inside beaver dams that drain beaver ponds without causing any tell-tale noise that can alert beavers to a leak that needs to be plugged. A widely referenced design is the Clemson Beaver Pond Leveler.

Another non-lethal device that I particularly like is the Beaver Deceiver, a fencing system that was invented in Vermont. The New Hampshire Department of Transportation recently approved the use of the device near a busy road where flooding’s been a problem. 

One of my principal findings while researching the book “Water Connections” is that water’s a place for inventive minds – whether in designing new hydropower technologies or water treatment methods or water-saving devices in household appliances.

Beavers can similarly get the creating juices flowing. So long as they are building dams and blocking culverts for their own purposes – and so long as we’re inclined to non-lethal responses --  there’ll be opportunity for invention.

Water and history

On July 26 author Jim Rousmaniere discussed water and history during a segment at Bookstock, an annual festival of writing in Woodstock, Vermont.

The presentation focused largely on events and developments in the Green Mountain state — including an unrealized New Deal plan from the 1930s that would have installed a great many multi-purpose dams in northern New England a la Tennessee Valley Authority, but the broader messages raised in the presentation can be applied to water beyond that state’s boundaries.

What not to flush

We toss all kinds of stuff down the toilet that we shouldn’t, causing cost, inconvenience and worse.

For example, unused pharmaceuticals. Not all that long ago Americans were instructed to flush unused prescription drugs down the toilet, only later to be told that pharmaceutical residues can wind up in somebody else’s water. The instruction now: dispose of old drugs another way.

Then there’s the trash that winds up clogging waste water pipes – sanitary napkins, needles, condoms, kitchen grease, food waste, supposedly degradable diapers, and, increasingly in recent years, heavily marketed wet wipes.

There’s a word for the clogs that all this flushed garbage winds up causing: “fatberg” – a term now so commonly accepted that in 2015 it was added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online.

The clogging problem was initially reported to be a particular bother in England where it was partly attributed to aging sewer pipes, but the situation apparently knows no boundaries.

In 2018 a fatberg measuring 11 feet wide, 200 feet long and 6 feet tall blocked a city sewer pipe in Detroit.  In Baltimore, a mammoth blockage of fats, wipes and other waste caused a spill of more than a million gallons of raw sewage. New York City, which spends a reported $19 million each year removing fatbergs, runs a public awareness campaign that says that only the following four items are suitable for toilets: pee, poop, puke and toilet paper.

Sanitary wipes, a relatively new consumer product, are a big part of the problem, and are a big focus of an organization called the International Water Services Flushibility Group. Last April Forbes magazine reported that Canadian researchers had studied 101 varieties of single-use wipes and found that not a one passed a flushibility test.

 Pressure’s been brought to bear on wipes makers, but public education is also getting a heavy focus – and occasionally in entertaining ways.

 Notably, the Singing Sewermen of Thames Water (London) have been putting their voices to the problem since 2009.

 The wastewater minstrels from Britain ultimately inspired a single in Keene, New Hampshire, where the energetic style of Bruce Springsteen finds an unusual expression. Listen up. “Pink Cadillac” will never be quite the the same.

For the sake of our water, get the message: Don’t flush that!