The Sustainable Plant Research and Outreach Center (SPROut) invites you to join us at our first annual phytotechnology conference.

Soak It Up!

Mission: The conference will raise awareness and provide education about plant based solutions for wastewater and stormwater challenges.  The conference will provide practical information about implementing the latest technologies and designs such as constructed wetlands, greenroofs, and rain gardens that will enhance ecology in our managed landscapes. Scientists and engineers will present research and case studies of real problems and solutions. By facilitating conversation and connection across industries we are providing the opportunity to stay at the leading edge of learning and research in this dynamic and growing field.  Come help us put plants to work for environmental sustainability and economic development.

Who should attend: Engineers, Designers, Landscape Architects, Landscape Contractors, Environmental Consultants, Architects, Researchers, Scientists, Growers, Regulators, Public Works Staff, City Planners & anyone else interested in learning about phytotechnology.

Call for exhibitors: We are still accepting exhibitors. Please see the registration form for details.

Contact: Direct all other questions about the conference to Renee Stoops, SPROut Director at 503.584.7252.

Registration: Please click here for a registration form which can be printed, and then mailed or faxed with payment to the address indicated. For registration questions, please call 503-399-5139. Register before March 9 for the early discount! Full conference is $290. Student rate is $180. Wednesday workshops are separate. Inquire about group discounts. For all the details, please see the form.

Lodging: Rooms at the Conference hotel are available for the special rate of $99/night from March 29 to April 1. Please call The Oregon Garden Resort at 503-874-2500 or visit their website at www.moonstonehotels.com/Oregon-Garden-Resort.htm . Use the information below for reserving on-line.
groupname: soakitup
password: soakitup

Agenda and Topics: The full agenda with abstracts is posted below.

2009 Agenda

2009 Abstracts

Gerould Wilhelm, Ph.D – Principal Botanist/Ecologist
Conservation Design Forum – Integrated Water Based Ecological Design
Consilience
When all in the ecosystem are "jumping together", along with congenial and attentive human stewardship, the "consilience" necessary for us all to sustain is in place.  

Tom Liptan – Ecoroof Program Manager
City of Portland, Environmental Services, Sustainable Stormwater Management
Sustainable Stormwater Management, Let Vegetation Do The Work: Costs, Benefits & O&M
Over the past several years the city of Portland has tested vegetated methods of stormwater management. The results are encouraging and demonstrate that an integrated approach to urban design and city form and function can be enhanced with “green” approaches. Discussion will include pros and cons of various green and non-green approaches. Integrating plants with the urban form and managing stormwater, reducing heat island, filtering air, reducing energy consumption, reduce carbon footprint, and more. 

Ian Balcom, Ph.D.
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
The Plant Physiology of Phytotechnology
This educational presentation is intended for technical and non technical attendees alike. Employing phytotechnologies in place of the engineered environmental management infrastructure can increase ecosystem carrying capacity while bolstering resilience in anthropogenic landscapes.  At the core of phytotechnologies are a variety of plant physiological processes. Plants' physical interactions with the environmental media (soil, water, and air) regulate ecohydrological and biogeochemical processes. Furthermore, designing and employing phytotechnologies requires knowledge of a variety of plant physiological functions. In addition to exploring physiological processes that can provide regulation of water and nutrient cycles within ecosystems, processes that drive phytoremediation of organic and inorganic pollutants, rhizofiltration of contaminated water, indoor and outdoor air purification, carbon sequestration, and phytostabilization, will be explained.   

Paul Kay, Principal Builder and Educator
Rogue Water
Carbon Accounting / Botanical Burrito Metrics – Developing Apples-to-Apples Comparisons of Economic and Environmental Efficiencies of Water Remediation Technologies
Phytotechnologies have potential to earn economic and carbon incomes while performing water remediation services. Investment in public infrastructure for the protection and enhancement of water resources is spurring the development of diverse water remediation technologies, and with a wide range of resource efficiencies. The implementation of efficient technologies requires that decision makers balance costs and benefits relevant to the taxpayers as well as the water, soil, and atmospheric environments. Measurements and relationships of water, energy, material, and financial resources can be used to compare diverse technologies and express these comparisons in common units. Further evaluation of these resource measures by capital, operational, and residual values reveals costs and benefits that might otherwise be overlooked or externalized. The value of these metrics is that diverse water remediation technologies are able to be more comprehensively, yet more simply, compared through a conversion to equivalent measures that employs a universal currency of carbon. 

Eli Cohen – Founder & Principal Engineer
Ayala Water and Ecology
Integrating Natural, Biological Systems with Landscape Ecology for Blackwater and Greywater Treatment and Reuse
Ayala is an Israeli engineering company that specializes in phytotechnology solutions for water, soil, or air pollution, especially natural, biological systems (NBS) that integrate with landscape ecology to treat blackwater or greywater for reuse. Ayala’s systems are in demand across the world (Israel, Costa Rica, China, India, New York, Mexico, etc) and designed for the uniqueness of each site, using a combination of techniques, such as constructed wetlands, sub-surface wetlands, or treatment with soil, with as little operational energy demand as possible. Ayala’s approach is extremely effective, cost-efficient, and well-suited for onsite community and farm treatment, winery waste treatment, industry pre-treatment, small scale municipal treatment, or functional urban landscape design for wastewater or stormwater. Ayala's systems have treated a wide range of pollutants, including industrial sewage, hydrocarbons, organic and mineral oils, petroleum, landfill leachate, salinated water, boron, pathogens, hormones, heavy metals, and many types of agricultural sewage. The company has its own nursery of aquatic plants for use in its projects.  

Ronald Jones, Ph. D.
Department of Biology, Portland State University
Removal of Total Phosphorus Using a Periphyton Mat Community in Constructed Wetlands in Florida
A periphyton mat is a community of tiny organisms such as protozoans, hydra, insects and snails that live attached to the surfaces of rooted freshwater aquatic plants. Periphyton Stormwater Treatment Area (PSTA) technology utilizes calcareous periphyton communities that naturally occur within relatively unimpacted areas of the Everglades with the proper hydroperiod and other conditions.  The Flying Crow Road Test Facility (FCRTF) consists of two main biological components: a pretreatment system comprised of two floating aquatic vegetation pools and four 10 by 100 foot periphyton mesocosms.  Dr. Jones will share findings from The Flying Crow Road Test Facility, a periphyton applied research facility located in northern Palm Beach County, Florida, within the footprint of Stormwater Treatment Area – 1 East (STA-1E).  This facility was designed and constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and Portland State University (PSU) during 1999–2000. The primary objective of the facility is to determine the PSTA technology at a pilot scale for implementation within STA-1E.    

Sarah A. White, Ph. D.
Department of Horticulture, Clemson University
Constructed Wetlands: Ecological Alternatives for Remediating Nursery Runoff
Runoff from plant nursery production areas can potentially impair offsite surface water quality and accelerate the natural eutrophication process.  This agrichemical rich runoff should be treated in some manner before exiting nurseries to reduce the potential for harmful environmental impacts.  Constructed wetlands are low maintenance treatment systems that can reduce agrichemical export and be adapted for managing runoff from various scales of nursery operations.  This presentation will present current research with various cost-effective, ecologically based, and sustainable technologies that minimize environmental impacts, will introduce cost-saving measures such as nutrient capture and reuse, and will provide examples of a range of treatment technologies available to help manage runoff for either recycling within the nursery or release off-site.  

Jason A. King – Associate Landscape Architect
GreenWorks, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design
Connecting Landscape Function to Ecological Function through Design
Landscape architecture projects have long-been used to provide remediation of the environment through implementation of green infrastructure and other ecological strategies. Sustainable stormwater management projects have long provided opportunities for creating beautiful and multi-functional landscapes that provide a range of benefits to community.  Additionally, the new shift and acceptance of integrated waste management and gray water reclamation using landscape interventions offers a whole new range of potential projects and benefits for net-zero water and waste at a variety of scales.  Amongst these landscape benefits are opportunities to utilize a range of phyto-technologies for improving water, soil, and air quality at a site, region, and global level.  Through an exploration of GreenWorks work in the Pacific Northwest, as well as other precedents from around the world, this presentation will provide a range of opportunities and strategies for connecting landscape function to ecological function - aiming to realize not just sustainable development, but truly regenerative design. 

David Maciolek – Senior Environmental Engineer
Living Machines / Worrell Water Technologies
Fourth Generation Engineered Wetland Systems and Living Machines for Stormwater and Wastewater Treatment
The adaptation of wetland ecosystems for wastewater treatment began in the 1960's and has undergone generations of advancement. Current wetland system design ranges from very simple to fairly complex. With advanced design, the footprint of the system can be drastically reduced while the effluent quality and reliability is markedly improved over the basic designs. This presentation will explain the evolution of wetland systems for wastewater and stormwater treatment with a focus on critical design issues to achieve performance and longevity. Several examples of advanced wetland systems will be reviewed from the perspective of design principles and functioning performance. Several Living Machine Systems will be presented as case studies, including the following:
1. Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. Human and laundry wastewater.
2. Las Vegas Regional Animal Campus, Las Vegas, Nevada. Dog kennel wastewater.
3. Guilford County Northern Schools, Greensboro, North Carolina. Human wastewater.
4. El Monte Sagrado Resort, Taos, New Mexico. Wastewater and stormwater (separate systems).

Brenna Bell & John Brush - Tryon Life Community Farm
Melora Golden - Recode
Exterior Greywater Use: The Path to Legalization
Recode Portland will present on its exterior greywater legalization campaign.  We will begin with some background about Tryon Life Community Farm and some of the legal barriers they encountered when trying to work towards a sustainable water management design for the land and its community. The story continues with the greywater forum that Recode and Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development organized to unearth greywater issues.  We will discuss the process of getting the Committee on Energy and the Environment to sponsor a bill to legalize the exterior use of greywater and discuss where this whole process is at. The opportunities are very exciting!  

Amy Whitworth – Landscape Designer
Plan-It Earth Design
Rain Gardens for the Disconnected Downspout
Rediscover rain – the essence of the PNW in winter. Drainage – what is uphill must come down.  How does water move and what does it want to do?  To disconnect the downspout or not – combined sewer overflows. Slow the flow; collect the water; infiltrate the water; disperse it. Move water away from the house – positive drainage.  Protect basements from flooding. Permeability – testing your soil’s percolation rate.  Not all soils are created equal. Living with water vs. moving it downhill – lawns into rain gardens. Mosquitos and water. What is a rain garden/bioswale/vegetated swale/infiltration swale? Residential vs. commercial applications. How to build a rain garden – where to site them, size them, how to amend soils. Inflows and outfalls – create a floodplain for big rain events. Splash rocks and dry wells. Drain rock or not? Decorating with rainwater – playful quality – decorative downspouts and scuppers. Rain Chains – beware of drift. Modify impervious surfaces (rills & channels). Dry stream beds. Online resources.  

Bartholomew “Mac” Martin
The Willamette Partnership
Market-Based Conservation and Water Credit Trading in the Willamette Basin
The Willamette Partnership is a diverse coalition of leaders working to shift the way people value, manage and regulate the environment. The Partnership is developing an ecosystem services marketplace that: 1) attracts strategic investments in conservation and restoration activities and 2) structures ecosystem transactions to account for everything from storing carbon to cooling river water. Every year businesses and communities spend tens of millions of dollars on environmental compliance—much of it mandated by regulations designed to meet a very limited range of highly visible environmental problems. The trouble with funneling huge financial investments into a limited number of “marquee” environmental issues is that the more complex, systemic issues that led to the problems in the first place rarely receive attention. This then diverts us off the path to sustainability where healthy and resilient ecosystems form the cornerstone of a thriving economy. Worldwide, there has been an explosion of growth in market mechanisms to pay for the things that naturally-functioning ecosystems do for society—such as trees taking in carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen and purifying our water; wetlands filtering and recharging our groundwater; and reclaimed floodplains reducing the impacts of flood events. However, using market mechanisms to organize the purchase and sale of such vital services, in a manner that meets communal, economic and ecological goals, has proven challenging. Ecosystem service markets, like the one being developed by the Willamette Partnership, provide a pivotal link between the people willing to pay for actions that improve and protect our environment and those who can take those actions.  Oregon has nurtured creative thinking, environmental innovation and leadership for decades and is now poised to propel ecosystem service markets as a way to resolve some of our most challenging environmental problems, while also creating the economies that support the people doing it. 

Mark Madison – Principal Engineer
CH2M Hill
Natural Treatment Innovations for Conventional Wastewater Treatment Plants  

Tomas Vanek, Ph. D. – Head of Laboratory of Plant Biology
Joint Laboratory of Institute of Experimental Botany and Research Institute of Crop Production, Czech Republic
Pharmeceuticals in Waters – Environmental Problem and Its Potential Solution
Today more than 100,000 different chemicals are distributed on the global market, and one third of them exceed quantities of one ton per year. Most of them have been introduced for the benefit of daily life, medicine, food production and industrial purposes. A good portion of these compounds lacks natural counterparts. Amongst them are well known pesticides, plasticizers, fuel additives, flame retardants, medications, and fragrances. Industrial activities are a second source of pollution. Industrial wastewaters discharged into aquatic ecosystems either directly or because of inadequate treatment can lower water quality by increasing concentrations of pollutants such as organic matter, suspended particulates, micropollutants, phosphorus, ammonium or heavy metals, thereby causing adverse effects on human health and undesirable changes in the composition of aquatic biota.  Utilization of such type of water for agriculture and irrigation can lead to contamination of soil and ultimately the food chain. This presentation will be focused on the fast growing problem of environmental contamination by so called “new contaminants”- pharmaceuticals, house-hold products and others. According to a USGS study (http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/FS-027-02/), the most frequently detected chemicals of this type (found in more than half of the streams) were coprostanol (fecal steroid), cholesterol (plant and animal steroid), N-N-diethyltoluamide (insect repellent), caffeine (stimulant), triclosan (antimicrobial disinfectant), tri (2-chloroethyl) phosphate (fire retardant), and 4-nonylphenol (nonionic detergent metabolite). Steroids, nonprescription drugs, and insect repellent were the chemical groups most frequently detected. Detergent metabolites, steroids, and plasticizers generally were measured at the highest concentrations. The main problem with these compounds is that conventional treatment systems are not sufficient for filtering or removing them from the water. To solve this problem, phytotechnologies can be used for cleaning both soil and waters  by accumulation and/or  degradation  of the above mentioned compounds using different plant species. This approach and its efficiency will be demonstrated using the most frequently used pharmaceuticals  (paracetamol, ibuprofen, and diclophenac). Acknowledgement: this work was supported from 2B06187 and 1MO6030  MYES research projects. 

Daniel Moreno – Graduate Research Assistant
Biological & Ecological Engineering Department, Oregon State University
Pilot Studies of Natural Wastewater Treatment Methods in Woodburn, Oregon
Several natural wastewater treatment methods are being studied at the Public-owned Treatment Works, in Woodburn, Oregon, to investigate their potential in meeting increasing effluent loads, emerging TMDL limits, and future NPDES permit standards.  The purpose of the pilot studies is to establish their treatment efficacy, establish design criteria that can be used in scaling up each pilot study to full scale applications, and to provide the data required by DEQ for permitting of these alternative technologies. The current pilot projects being studied are: (1) high rate poplar irrigation, (2) poplar tree coppice, (3) constructed treatment wetland, and (4) hyporheic discharge. Preliminary results include nitrate content and water mass balance from passive-capillary lysimeters installed beneath poplar trees.

Sean Dempsey
Floating Islands West
Cleaning Water, Improving Habitat, and Beautifying the Landscape with Floating Islands 

Paul Stamets – Founder & President
Fungi Perfecti, LLC
Solutions from Nature: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
As we are now well engaged in the 6th Major Extinction (“6 X”) on planet Earth, our biosphere is quickly changing, eroding the life support systems that have allowed humans to ascend. Unless we put into action policies and technologies that can cause a course correction in the very near future, species diversity will continue to plummet, with humans not only being the primary cause, but one of the victims. What can we do? Fungi, particularly mushrooms, offer some powerful, practical solutions, which can be put into practice now. Paul will present six inventions, which help steer ecosystems and humanity to a healthier future. Paul Stamets will discuss the evolution of mushrooms in ecosystems and how fungi can help heal environments. As environmental health and human health are inextricably interconnected, fungi offer unique opportunities that capitalize on mycelium's diverse properties. Fungi are the grand molecular dis-assemblers in nature, decomposing plants and animals, creating soils and the food web of life.  Forest dwelling mushroom mycelium can achieve the greatest mass of any living organism - this characteristic is a testimonial to the inherent biological power of the fungus. Paul’s work with mycelium shows how these largely untapped organisms can replace chemical insecticides; break down toxic wastes, including petroleum-based products such as diesel, dioxins, and numerous other toxins into non-toxic forms. Understanding mycelium's production of antibiotics is useful not only to compete with bacteria in nature but has also proven useful for preventing vectors of diseases that afflict animals, and ultimately humans. By building mycofiltration membranes, pollution from farms and factories can be reduced or eliminated, protecting downstream environments from toxins. Moreover, land-users now have a powerful new suite of myco-remedies for enhancing sustainability and strengthening the fabric of life of synergistic organisms. Farmers, gardeners, green architects and ecological designers all can use these emerging mycotechonologies. About a dozen species of medicinal mushrooms will be explored from a historical perspective leading to the clinical studies in which Paul is participating. Moreover, he will discuss his work with the U.S. Departments' Bioshield BioDefense program, wherein his extracts were the first natural products from hundreds of thousands of samples tested found to be potent inhibitors of pox, bird flu and other viruses. As ecosystems become stressed, diseases proliferate, and many scientists predict a viral storm is on the near horizon, one symptom of the Earth reacting to the insults we have levied. His recent research shows mushrooms have a surprisingly broad range of anti-infective properties, including but not limited to inhibiting Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. If it were not for the biological prejudice against 'mushrooms', science would be better prepared for facing these challenges. Paul will demonstrate that mycelium offers many of the solutions we sorely need.