Get Smarter About Water

Ducks take off from the Taylor Lakes playa unit between Clarendon and Memphis. Courtesy Texas Parks & Wildlife.

The thousands of playa lakes across the plains, including the Panhandle, are scattered wet treasures in need of a little TLC to stay their best, and several groups have gotten together some presentations for landowners on what we’re talking about.

Classes, including lunch, will be from 11 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. on Feb. 3 in the Swisher Memorial Building at 127 S.W. Second St. in Tulia.

Playas are hangouts for all kinds of birds and provide what little recharge the Ogallala Aquifer gets. So it’s important to keep them healthy and happy.

“Since most playas are found on private land, landowner management is essential to maintaining and preserving playas as a linchpin in our precious water cycle,” said Darryl Birkenfeld, director of Ogallala Commons.

The workshop presentations will touch on depletion rates of the Ogallala, playa conservation programs, and techniques for playa grazing management. And best of all it’s free.

Dave Haukos, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service migratory bird specialist at Texas Tech University will begin with an overview. Kevin Mulligan, a Tech geographer, will talk about saturated thicknesses and depletion rates of the Ogallala. Manuel De Leon, wildlife biologist with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, will cover federal incentive programs like the Wetlands Reserve Program and the Grasslands Conservation Program. He will also discuss grazing practices that enhance playa functioning and increase wildlife habitat, according to a news release.

To reserve a place at this workshop, or for more information, contact Jeff Lewter, NRCS District Conservation in Tulia at 806-995-4126, ext.3.

The workshop is sponsored by Ogallala Commons, with its partners: the Natural Resource Conservation Service, Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, and Playa Lakes Joint Venture.

graphic from Playa Lake Joint Ventures

Another day, another lawsuit

WildEarth Guardians are still on their BioBlitz warpath.

It’s their campaign to raise awareness of endangered species and to mark the 36th birthday of the Endangered Species Act with a new lawsuit or complaint every workday for eight weeks.

This time their focus is the prairie ecosystem we call home. Prairie Week will include suits to save two insects, a fish, a lizard and a kangaroo rat. The threats include” urban sprawl, oil and gas extraction, invasions of non-native plants and animals” and other stuff, according to the group.

“The Great Plains needs a home makeover that provides enough space for the original prairie occupants from the animal kingdom,” said Lauren McCain, Prairie Protection Director for WildEarth Guardians.

I know, I practically bet the lesser-prairie chicken would have been on the list. But our highest-profile threatened species didn’t make the cut.

The lawsuits and petitions this week are aimed at protecting habitat for the Great Plains wolf, plains grizzly bear, Audubon bighorn sheep, eastern elk, passenger pigeon, and heath hen.

Now we surely live on the plains here, but I haven’t seen any of these around. The Great Plains covers a lot of area, so I guess they’re somewhere.

Much Mish Mash

Here's a few unrelated, but related items.

Yeah, baby it's cold outside
But the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center has a Night Hike coming up December 11 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for children and seniors and members are free. Bring a flashlight for the hike and activities. They promise hot chocolate after the hike. It better be really hot.

The next day at the Bluff is a program on land management and fire.

From 10 a.m. to noon hear a lecture on fire ecology and then hike to an area that was burned in November 2008 to get smart about the importance of fire in our ecosytem. Admission is the same as for the Night Hike.

The Bluff is out Soncy Road north from Interstate 40 on the west side.

Powering up
Makes sense. Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge is getting $96,000 in recovery money from Uncle Sam to install solar power panels. Natural power in the middle of nature - the ducks will probably approve.

Boost your bill
SPS is asking pretty please in Austin to put a new charge on your bill. The money would go to purchase Renewable Energy Credits. It's a voluntary program the PUC has to approve, but monthly payments to help fund wind energy might be a handy way to do it.

Friendly skies?

The headline was somewhat troubling – Airlines unite in deal for alternative fuel.

Is that safe? Flying planes on algae or beef fat turned to fuel?

My concern was testing. I haven’t seen a lot about how aviation has access to all this great bio-fuel that works fine. You would think we would want to be careful about this thousands of feet in the air. It might work, but I don’t know about it.

Reading into the press release and my pulse went down a little. Seems Rentech was announcing it had signed an “unprecedented” agreement to supply eight airlines with up to 1.5 million gallons per year of renewable synthetic diesel - but wait - for “ground service equipment” at Los Angeles International Airport.

I was feeling much better. I hadn’t missed some breakthrough. I wasn’t flying on a fuel that was just hitting the market. And I don’t have plans to be at LAX anytime soon, so the trucks on the ground aren’t even a problem.

Much better. Besides, the plant that will make the fuel won’t even be online until late 2012. The low-carbon, clean-burning fuel will be made from “woody green urban waste” like grass clippings.

There goes the pulse again, flying on grass clippings.

This whole green thing will take some getting used to, and I want lots of testing. And that’s not to say this fuel will not be great. I’m just saying…

Making manure green

Not by feeding too much alfalfa.

Dairy cows are big energy users, but a Texas AgriLife researcher will present a paper at the Texas Animal Manure Management Issues forum in Austin that shows they can pay their energy bills and more.

I’m not sure what will be more fun, barhopping on Sixth Street or the conference.

But I digress. Cady Engler, the researcher, looked at electrical, diesel, gasoline and natural gas usage on dairies for milking, waste management, feeding and watering. He didn’t include the energy to grow crops for feed or transporting the milk to market.

He found a wide variation in usage from one type of dairy to another, but the average was about 3.2 kilowatt hours per day per cow.

Turning manure into energy, either with bacteria to make methane or high heat to make hydrogen or both could make up to 25 kilowatt hours per day per cow.

The processes can not only make energy, in the form of heat or electricity, but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the manure. They also reduce the volume of “nutrients” left to be disposed of. In ag researcher talk that means there’s less poop to spread on farm fields - up to 80 percent less.

And in places where it rains (that leaves most of the Panhandle out) and there's hills (out again) that would mean less threat of said "nutrients" ending up in a creek, then a river, then a lake, then your house. But you already got that.

Wait a minute

Some guy from North Chili, N.Y., is trying to get everyone to lighten their load by putting stuff out on their curb on Oct. 24 to let other people pick through it.

Okay, first, what’s a New York town calling itself Chili for? Second, this is supposed to let you get rid of useable stuff you don’t really use. Sounds good. But what happens when you go digging through your neighbors stuff and go home with more stuff? You get nowhere or go backwards on the too-much-stuff treadmill.

I’m going to have to think about this one. I know reuse is right in there with recycle, but I’m not sure how this plan would play out in the real world.

Check out the Web site and see what you think. But like supporters of Curb Day say, “What’s rusting in your garage?”

Greenerrific

Packed with product

there's never too much green

Who'd of thunk Office Depot, seller of murdered trees by the ream, would be flexing its green muscles?

The company has redesigned its environmental Web site to better shout its credentials. It sports the Depot "global environmental vision" to "Buy Green, Be Green and Sell Green."

Greened out yet? Impossible.

How about the Green Book catalog with 2,200 of Office Depot's greenest products and tips? How about green rankings of its products from light green for refillable pens to dark green for 100 percent recycled content file folders? Well, how about the Greener Office Guide to going from "green starter" to "green leader?"

But check it out. The company's done a lot of work to communicate its position and make a little money to add to its $14.5 billion sales every year.

Making Green Sausage

You may not want to look too closely at this because the making of legislation or sausage can make you queasy.

Up in D.C., they're working on a greenhouse gas bill to curb the production of carbon dioxide, and there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. In the first quarter of 2009, 140 businesses or interest groups have put lobbyists into action to represent them in the creation of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act. That makes a total of 880 firms or groups with lobbyists involved, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Of course, the power companies and oil and gas interests make up more than half of those. But what the heck? There's also Google, Nike and Starbucks, to name a few of the not-so-usual suspects. Then there's the American Meat Institute ("don't outlaw cow burps"), Levi Strauss and the maker of Segways (transportation without the tailpipes).

Too much?

They would probably say never enough.

There's a lot of money involved when you start talking about selling permits to pollute, better known as cap and trade, or keeping you're friends employed in Washington. The center reports the lobbyists have multiple clients. For example, 10 lobbyist firms represent 100 businesses. That's a lot of former government officials and Capital Hill staffers at work to keep the Earth from getting all crispy.