Mayhem on Main Street - The controller from outer space

The city of Amarillo is giving rebates up to $50 per water customer to people who buy controllers that turn their sprinkler system off when it's raining or near freezing, but Tom Ash thinks that's a "baby step."

Ash is the director of conservation for HydroPoint, a company that offers more than just a puny rain/freeze controller. They can input what plants you're growing, the slope of the yard, how much exposure to the sun there is, the soil type. Then the controller crunches the data to calculate the most efficient irrigation schedule for you.

But wait. There's more.

Just picture all the information flying through space from Earth to satellite to Earth to satellite to Earth as HydroPoint constantly collects information from the National Weather Service, other government weather observatories and private weather stations. They do some kind of way-too-complicated number work and figure out the evaporation and transpiration rates in the "micro zone" your yard is in. (That means how much water vapor is going back into the air and how much the plants are releasing in the surrounding half square mile.)

All that figuring goes into tweaking the irrigation schedule that is transmitted by satellite to the controller.

There is a monthly fee for all this high-tech aid, but Ash says you save water, but also energy to pump the water. Then there's the carbon dioxide that would have been created by the Harrington Power Station while Xcel Energy to makes the electricity to power the pumps that move the water for the house that Jack built.

Let's see, that's a win, win, lose...well, good thing I'm not doing all this high-concept calculating.

I don't know if it works, but it is an interesting idea.

Oh yeah, and you can wire a "baby-step" rain sensor in for an extra charge.

I've never really believed confession is good for the soul in every case. Carrying unspoken guilt can build character. But here we go.

After starting way too many plants from seeds in the chill of winter and buying way more than enough clearance plants at Irwin's wholesale greenhouse blowout clearance, the evenings have been filled with careful, gentle watering of said plants. But time, sun, heat and wind never let me get ahead so that it didn't have to be every day. But running a sprinkler to throw the water to the wind was not an option and the need to not wash them away meant no flooding.

So I finally got the landscape fabric and soaker hoses laid out. You remember, the stuff purchased months ago. Anyway, I happily turned on the water-saving helpers last week and walked away. Know what? They're great for not having to be tended - unless you just forget them.

This won't be the first time I left the water running all night, but they did a great job, so I'm not too disappointed. And at least they were just dripping along instead of spraying. Now the beds are fully soaked and the plants are very happy instead of droopy.

One consequence is the grass around the beds is also very happy since the soaking moved out into the yard in irregular blobs. Mowing in July, can't beat that for fun.

But if you want to do a good watering and get the most out of your water, I love those leaky hoses that just weep the water. But don't forget them. Maybe I need a post-it on my forehead.

Food, fun and a little freaky

There will be some interesting, sometimes even in a good way, stuff in Chicago at three food trade shows June 16-18.

Now, Chicago is a food town deluxe, from that pizza to Mexican, yes Mexican. But the shows, All Things Organic, Expo Comida Latina and All Asia will be showing off everything from hardware to foods that don’t necessarily fit the every-day shopping list.

How about dinnerware made of residue from sugar cane processing or Hawaiian Health’s Ohana-Lavender Noni Lotion for Pets? It’s supposed to be for fungal and bacterial infections, cuts, muscle strains and more. Sounds like what I need for those gardening days gone wild.

And don’t forget the fun. There will be jigsaw puzzles that bring a new meaning to Greenpeace (green pieces, get it?). TDK Games’ Greenpieces puzzles are printed on paper embedded with wildflower seeds. After you finish the puzzle, take it apart, plant and water the pieces for flowers if you’re not embarrassed to be seen planting puzzle pieces.

But the food – everything from purple carrot juice to fruit pastes made with grape skin extract.
Carmelized flax seed, blueberries and basil packed together to top salads, organic and biodynamic wine, green tea beer and a full range of organic spirits, will be on display, according to the shows’ Web sites.

But I’m drawing the line at beer made from green tea, at least until I have a couple of boring beers.

Making a case for conservation

There are all sorts of arguments for conserving natural resources. You can save the world for your grandchildren or something more practical like paying less for energy. But the main point is it's not just for those nasty granola-gobbling hippies anymore.

My e-mail is regularly jammed with messages about conservation and right now especially about curbing carbon emissions which mostly comes from using less gas, coal and such.

But not to forget injecting carbon dioxide into the ground to keep it out of the atmosphere. I just wonder about the consequences of that. What happens if you drink too much beer but can't burp?

Then there's the taxing or trading of carbon credits. Another government agency or Wall Street wannabe to help things out. That should make you warm inside.

Anyway, here are some recent takes on why conservation might be a good idea.

Apparently, it's going to be a Google world or maybe even universe. The giant search, mapping and street scene company is moving into the energy monitoring business. It hopes to roll out its Google PowerMeter by the end of the year. The device would tell homeowners or business people how much electricity they are using at any time.

Of course, it is trying to figure out how to get more of the Obama stimulus money for that because, as just a struggling little outfit, it needs some corporate welfare. Right now grants for such projects are capped at $20 million, and Google thinks that's not enough.

But the company touts the benefits of the PowerMeter through its workers who are testing early versions. According to testers, they found they were using too much energy for everything from refrigerators to pool pumps, not to mention using an electric oven to toast bread instead of a toaster. One reported saving $3,000 in electric costs on one year after using the PowerMeter to measure usage and make adjustments to his lifestyle.

That's a good argument, but, like the Ginzu knives, there's more. Google also claims that six households reducing electric usage by 10 percent would be the equivalent in carbon savings of taking one auto off the road.

In the water world, the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District released its annual measurements of the Ogallala's decline recently. The average decline in the 1,196 private wells it monitors was 1.18 feet for 2008.

That makes the 10-year average drop .72 feet per year. The district attributes the decline last year to increased irrigation pumping due to sparse rainfall. Think about an average of .72 feet per year and how long it will take before shallower wells go dry and farmers can't afford to pump from deeper wells. Maybe conservation, by farmers and civilians, might be something attractive.

The city of Amarillo will be rolling out this year's Every Drop Counts conservation campaign very shortly. It might pay for us to embrace the effort.

From The Ground Up

An intimate relationship

It takes a lot of water to keep electric generation going and and a good bit of power to move and treat water.

The University of Texas and the Environmental Defense Fund released a report today that will tell you how all of that works. It's a hefty read at 56 pages, but when you consider Texas power plants use 157 million gallons of water every year, enough for the home use of 3 million people per year, it's an important read.

Power plants heat water into steam to turn turbines and more water to cool down and condense the steam back into water for reuse. On the other side of the equation, getting water out of the ground, moving it to consumers and treating the resulting wastewater takes electricity.

The upshot is improving water conservation reduces power use and improving energy efficiency reduces water needs.

The report may give you more details than you really want in its 56 pages, but there are some eye openers. For example, it says average U.S. indoor residential water use breaks down to 31 percent for toilets and 25 percent for clothes washers, the two top categories of usage. Conservation costs money sometimes, but putting a bladder or brick in your toilet tank is cheap.

Look out the window for where the real savings can happen. The report says usage for your yard and such averages about 58 percent of all residential use.

The report, the first in a series, may make you wonder sometimes with phrases like "cross-sectional vulnerability," but it's pretty educational. Just hope policy makers pay attention so you're not the only one making good decisions about water and power use.

From The Ground Up

Welcome to my world and yours

I call this neighborhood From The Ground Up because it's all about where we all live - water, wind, plants, food and all the other topics that spring from thinking about resources like cooking, recycling and generally trying to live leaving a lighter footprint on the Earth.

I'll try to give peeks behind some of the topics I cover for the Amarillo Globe-News like energy, water, agriculture and the environment in general. But there will also be those tidbits floating around that are just interesting because the are.

Some of the stuff may be fun, and some troubling, but hopefully it will all be at least a little informative. Let's start with one end of the spectrum and then let the conversation begin. I want to hear from you so don't be shy.

From the "it doesn't taste like chicken" area of the spectrum, researchers report in the International Journal of Food Science & Technology that sausages made using jumbo squid mantle (head) muscle "performed well in sensory tests."

That could "open up a range of possibilities for product development," according to the report. The only things testers criticized were the color, aroma and texture. Oh yeah, and the possibility of a wretched death. Researchers cited an "unfavorable microbial profile" or a tendency to grow a lot of bacteria while in storage.

They couldn't be satisfied with perfectly acceptable bison/chipotle or chicken/spinach/asiago.
For the tasty details, go to www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/Scientists-edge-towards-squid-sausages.