Canadian Laxatives, Water Roombas, & Farm Friendly Tech

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Now the good stuff... this month we cover:

1. This really cool 'Romba' for cleaning up waterways
2. Why a Canadian company wants to dump laxatives into the ocean?
3. The farmers cleaning up water pollution with low tech farm tech

Bonus feature of the month:?This mini documentary on 'Action Park', an unbelievably dangerous (now closed) U.S. water park with a poorly engineered looping waterslide, is one to watch.

First: This startup has created a 'Roomba for coastal waterways'

Michael Arens became obsessed with solving the problem of ocean pollution after hearing about it in a high school speech class.

The 24-year-old CEO of?Clean Earth Rovers?is now making a splash in Florida, California, Ohio, Michigan and beyond with Rover 1, the robot he refers to as the "Roomba for coastal waterways." The autonomous cleaning robot for salt or freshwater weighs 400 pounds and can fit into the back of a pickup truck.

It can be programmed, using the same technology as unmanned aerial drones, to?clean coastal waterways?by collecting trash or cleaning up oil spills.

Like a little trash truck zipping around the surface of the ocean

"You can literally go in, put the boat in the water, go into the equivalent of a mapping system and say, 'I need you to do a zig-zag pattern for the next eight hours, grabbing debris and coming back every half an hour to empty out the bag," explains Acting Chief Technology Officer Rob Charvat.

While in college, Arens partnered with fellow Xavier University grad David Constantine and later UC's Jonathan Rosales to form the company. They were accepted into the University of Cincinnati's Venture Lab Program.

Now, Engineers at UC's 1819 Innovation Hub are manufacturing the robots, trying to keep up with the demand.

A clean ocean company founded nowhere near the ocean

"People often joke with us, like 'You guys are an ocean tech company based in Cincinnati. How did that happen?' " Arens says.

Charvat says it happened because of smart local people. "When you start talking about the comfort of our Coast Guard, who allowed us to develop this technology, the university participation, the universities creating top-notch students to want to go out and change the world and that's really where you see something like this come together here in a place like Cincinnati, when a lot of people would say there's a lot of other places this could happen but the magic is happening here."

Clean Earth Rovers has signed a distribution deal with B&B Services based in Naples, Fla. The deal guarantees a minimum order of 20 rovers to be delivered within the next year. B&B Services will sell the rovers to its contacts throughout South Florida and the Gulf Coast region.

Next: A Canadian company wants to dump tons of 'laxative' in St Ives Bay to fight climate change

Magnesium hydroxide is seen as a way to change the alkalinity of the ocean and help capture more CO2. But there is growing concern over plans by a Canadian minerals company to dump tons of minerals used to make laxatives in the sea as a way to fight climate change.

Planetary Technologies believes the minerals dumped in the ocean could increase its alkalinity which in turn will remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The company said their approach is called ocean alkalinity enhancement, and uses an alkaline mineral to shift the pH value of the sea. Making the water more alkaline speeds up the natural way oceans lock CO2 away by neutralizing dissolved CO2 and turning it into a salt.

Three hundred tons of Milk of Magnesia, coming right up!

As reported by?The Times, over the next few months the company is looking to drop up to 300 tons of magnesium hydroxide in its mineral form, brucite, in?St Ives?Bay. Magnesium hydroxide is probably better known as the compound Milk of Magnesia, which is used as a laxative.

Despite efforts by the Canadian company to engage with the community with public meetings in?Hayle?and?Truro, the news has divided opinion, with many welcoming the innovative bid to fight climate change but worried about any potential negative side effects.

Not being NIMBYies, locals just want the data

Sue Sayer, director of the Cornwall Seal Research Trust, said she welcomed companies exploring such approaches but felt further research ought to be carried out first.?She told The Times: “My main thoughts are that we need to make sure there are no unintended effects. My feeling is there isn’t sufficient data on this introduction of the mineral and therefore no release should be done until the data is available. It’s not me trying to do the nimby thing, St Ives Bay is a really vital bay for the Cornish economy and the environment.”

Ruth Williams, marine conservation manager at the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, told the newspaper that while the company’s approach was innovative and she welcomed its engagement with locals, the charity also feels that more research needs to be done to ensure the process does not negatively impact on the environment.

The method also is understood to help reversing ocean acidification which is a threat to marine wildlife around the world such as coral reefs and other habitats. The company said it intends to add 0.007% of antacid to the existing the wastewater flow in Hayle throughout the period of 90 days. This should result in roughly 100 tons of net CO2 removal from the atmosphere.

Finally: The Simple Tech Making Farm Water Cleaner

Nick Helland's central Iowa farm looks much like every other nearby farm - corn stubble stretching from a gravel road up over a low hill to the northern horizon.

But look closely, and you can see patches of muddy ground where just a few months ago crews buried 'low-tech' systems - bioreactors and streamside buffers - that filter fertilizer-borne nitrates from water as it drains from Helland's field into nearby Big Creek and eventually the Des Moines River.

The underground devices work. The question is whether one Iowa county's promising new approach to an old problem can be expanded enough to finally address nitrate pollution that, for years, has endangered drinking water, made more than half the state's waterways unfit for fish or humans, and fueled a giant dead zone nearly 1,000 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico.

The payments make this wayyyy more attractive

Polk County is doing it by making it painless for farmers — handling all the logistics and arrangements for the systems — and throwing in payments of $1,000 per site. Installations have exploded in the past two years, to 104, after only a handful were installed the eight years before that.

"They paid me and they paid the cost of all the installation," Helland said. "That's sort of a no-brainer to me that with very little lift, very little time, I can have this installed on my farm and it will ensure better water quality for everyone else downstream."

The big challenge now is encouraging counties to launch and fund similar efforts to reduce runoff from Iowa's 10 million acres of tile-drained farmland and combat the state's multi-billion dollar problem with nitrogen pollution.

Because Nitrogen is Gnarly

Nitrogen-based fertilizers and manure can lead to excessive nitrates in groundwater that can be toxic to livestock and humans. High levels have plagued waterways in Iowa and throughout the Midwest for decades from chemical fertilizers and animal manure sprayed on fields. Modern tractors let farmers assess their soil and apply only as much fertilizer as needed, but it's still common to overspray.

Numerous studies have found the low-tech systems remove half the nitrate or more from runoff before it reaches waterways. In bioreactors, the water passes through a buried mound of wood chips that break down much of the nitrate. In the buffers, it moves through a grassy area parallel to a stream.

"Our success came from realizing we had been doing it wrong for like six years," said John Swanson, Polk County's water resources supervisor.

Progress is being made... but there's a LOT of catching up to do

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig, who has strongly opposed requiring farmers to filter runoff, has embraced Polk County's effort and encouraged it elsewhere.

"We're making it easy for a landowner to say yes, and then we bring the resources," Naig said. "These are essentially 100% paid for. Either way, the work has to get done, and to have willing landowners and willing producers get involved, that will work much better."

But clean water advocates note that Iowa needs thousands of the systems added each year, not hundreds, and question whether voluntary efforts can reach even a small percentage of the state's farms — let alone those in other states.

"There's a lot of people who are doing really good work," said Alicia Vasto, the water program director at the Iowa Environmental Council. "The fact of the matter is that it's just not at the pace and scale that's necessary to fix the problem."

Jerry Hill, who has farmed for 52 years, attended the Story County meeting with other farmers and is leaning toward installing a bioreactor along a creek that borders his property. He liked the idea of filtering the water at little cost to his bottom line.

"We're going to have to do a better job of keeping things clean," Hill said. "From what I've heard, what they have going now is as good as it gets."

That's a wrap for this month's At Water's Edge!

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