
Scientists Use Recycled Sewage Water to Grow 500-Acre Forest in the Desert - ph0rque
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/using-sewage-water-to-grow-trees-in-egyptian-desert/
======
BurningFrog
A little beside the topic perhaps, but my all time favorite desert greening
project is connecting the huge Qattara Depression in Egypt with the ocean.

This would create a huge lake in northwestern Egypt, potentially home for
millions. It would also negate one year of climate change induced sea rise, or
so I read somewhere.

[https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/qattara-depression-
projec...](https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/qattara-depression-project-time-
revisit)

Map of the potential lake, if brought up to sea level:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression#/media/File...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression#/media/File:Egypt_relief_location_map.jpg)

~~~
lxmorj
Couple dozen 55km Boring Company Tunnels could do the trick, no?

~~~
rumanator
> Couple dozen 55km Boring Company Tunnels could do the trick, no?

The Boring Company is not the only one using COTS tunneling equipment, nor has
any relevant engineering project under it's portfolio. Although it excels at
marketing, I fail to see how it should be used as a measuring stick in
geothecnical work.

------
carapace
This is awesome! See also "Greening the Desert" [1] about integrated systems
("Permaculture" is a school of applied ecology.)

These systems, properly designed, create the materials needed to build new
copies of themselves. They're (potentially) self-replicating. A bit of labor
and a lot of intelligence and we can convert deserts into gardens and food
forests. And, given time, they will alter the (micro- then macro-) climate.

(I feel like we have all the technology we need to solve our problems now, but
we are distracted and incoherent.)

[1] [https://greeningthedesertproject.org/about-
us/](https://greeningthedesertproject.org/about-us/)

[https://greeningthedesertproject.org/celebrating-10-years-
at...](https://greeningthedesertproject.org/celebrating-10-years-at-the-
greening-the-desert-project-jordan/)

> The Greening the Desert Project started with the purchase of land about ten
> years ago, and it expanded slowly until that mounted into exponential
> growth. Things started at the top, literally, with a large water tank that
> feeds a shower/toilet block just downhill. The toilets are dry composting,
> supplying fertilizer for plants on site, and the greywater from the showers
> and sinks goes to a nearby reed bed. The reed bed, still high in the
> landscape, is then able to send gravity-fed irrigation to many trees
> throughout the site. It’s all used onsite for beneficial biological
> cleaning.

> The food forest with stone walls and earth-backed swales moves through the
> landscape to rabbit and chicken houses, which combine manures in a system
> that creates a cubic meter of compost every five weeks. That goes to the
> main crop garden, a shade-covered kitchen garden. The surplus fertilizer
> (compost) goes to food forest trees and the nursery. The runoff from the
> nursery goes through to the kitchen garden. The accommodation building has
> an office, a classroom, and eight bedrooms. It’s two stories high and made
> with earth brick and straw bale. The roof has a beautiful garden made up of
> wicking beds.

~~~
ph0rque
Yes! I am hoping and planning to get my PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate)
this year.

~~~
carapace
Hey, you're the AutoMicroFarm guy?

There was a company years ago that remodeled/landscaped people's yards into
permie gardens and then harvested the crops and distributed them like a CSA.
You could integrate a market function into your offering, eh?

~~~
ph0rque
Yes, there are lots of possibilities... but figuring out the business side of
things has proven harder than I expected.

~~~
carapace
I'd be interested to hear more. As I said in a sib comment, permaculture et.
al. obviously _works_ and (in many ways) is more desirable than conventional
agriculture† yet integrating it with the existing economy seems challenging.
The existing systems really do provide tremendous amounts of food at very low
prices, and it's hard to compete. It seems like you have to work with the
kitchen budget that would be saved by growing one's own veggies in the
backyard.

†Farms turn forest into desert, while permaculture turns desert into forest!

~~~
ph0rque
That's great to hear! My ambitions for
[https://edible.estate/](https://edible.estate/) are to use the climate,
weather, and plant data available to help guide the user and eventually
provide auto-generated permaculture designs for a given plot of land
(essentially, permaculture in an app). I realize that the app might get you
only 50% (maybe eventually 90%) there, but a lot of the design principles and
rules of thumb I've learned are amenable to being captured in code logic.

If you would like to continue the dialog, please email me (andrew at
automicrofarm.com) or set up a time to video chat
([https://automicrofarm.com/book-an-
appointment.html](https://automicrofarm.com/book-an-appointment.html)).
Thanks, looking forward to it!

------
hyperpallium
> Although desertification is sometimes thought of as the swallowing of lands
> adjacent to deserts, it is actually a process whereby land that was once
> fertile or semi-arable becomes desert as a result of things like
> unsustainable agricultural practices, or long-lasting drought.

So, desert doesn't encroach. Does this imply that de-desertification also
doesn't encroach?

I'd like to think that a green vanguard paves the way for further
colonizatiin, including by better water retention than sand; and capturing
morning dew.

~~~
jobseeker990
So you can find me a large barren field in a rainy region that was created by
unsustainable agriculture?

On the contrary, life finds a way. unless an area is nearly 100% devoid of
water you're going to find some life there, and if it's rainy, something will
certainly be growing.

~~~
catalogia
> _" So you can find me a large barren field in a rainy region that was
> created by unsustainable agriculture?"_

Is 40 acres big enough?

> _" The Desert of Maine is a 40-acre (160,000 m2) tract of exposed glacial
> silt (a sand-like substance, but finer-grained than sand) surrounded by a
> pine forest near the town of Freeport, Maine, in the United States. The
> Desert of Maine is not a true desert, as it receives an abundance of
> precipitation, and the surrounding vegetation is being allowed to encroach
> on the barren dunes."_

> _" The Desert of Maine originated when the Tuttle family purchased and began
> farming the site beginning in 1797. Failure to rotate their potato crops,
> combined with land clearance and followed by overgrazing by sheep, led to
> soil erosion, exposing a dune of sand-like glacial silt. The initially-
> exposed small patch of sand gradually spread and overtook the entire farm.
> The Tuttles abandoned the land in 1919 when it was purchased for $300
> ($7.50/acre) by Henry Goldrup, who converted it to a tourist attraction in
> 1925.[1]"_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_of_Maine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_of_Maine)

~~~
perl4ever
"40 acres and a mule" is what each freed family was proverbially promised
after the US Civil War, so it seems like it wasn't considered a huge amount in
1865.

~~~
catalogia
Whether or not the Tuttle family were wealthy is beyond the point. 400^2
meters of Maine turning into sand dunes is plenty large enough to demonstrate
that mismanagement of farm land can destroy the fertility of that land.

------
thdrdt
If you like this you might also like Groasis, a company that produces boxes
that can be placed around young trees so they can grow from condensation the
first years. They also have a lot of success in deserts and mountain areas.

[https://www.groasis.com/](https://www.groasis.com/)

~~~
wjnc
Funny that Groasis was founded in '03 while Tree T-PEE of Shark Tank fame was
founded in '05\. Similar inventions popping up at the same time is always fun
to see in action.

~~~
avip
The concept of collecting moisture from air is somewhere between decades-old
(the modern plastic version) and centuries old.

~~~
yesenadam
"Fog or dew collection is an ancient practice. Archaeologists have found
evidence in Israel of low circular walls that were built around plants and
vines to collect moisture from condensation. In South America’s Atacama Desert
and in Egypt, piles of stones were arranged so that condensation could trickle
down the inside walls where it was collected and then stored."

[https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/03/07/the-fog-
collectors-...](https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/03/07/the-fog-collectors-
harvesting-water-from-thin-air/)

------
reaperducer
A lot of people eat food grown with recycled sewage and don't even know it.

Every excretion flushed in the city of Chicago ends up as fertilizer on
midwest farms. Mostly soybeans, IIRC.

A lot of zoos sell their surplus animal dung in big bags called "zoo poo."
It's used in home gardens and small scale community farms.

~~~
weberc2
> Every excretion flushed in the city of Chicago ends up as fertilizer on
> midwest farms. Mostly soybeans, IIRC.

Is this meaningfully true? My understanding is that the wastewater is treated
and emptied into the Chicago river where it flows toward Missouri. Insofar as
that water is rich in organic compounds, it "fertilizes" the fields that draw
from that river and its distributaries; however, this model is different than
the picture you paint, which sounds more like dumping more-or-less raw sewage
directly on fields. If the latter is indeed the case, it's news to me,
especially since I understand human sewage fertilizer to be prohibited as a
health risk.

~~~
lallysingh
No parts of the sewage are filtered out and turned into fertilizer. At least
that's how it works in ny.

~~~
reaperducer
Chicago is not in New York.

[https://news.wttw.com/2016/05/24/turning-wastewater-
fertiliz...](https://news.wttw.com/2016/05/24/turning-wastewater-fertilizer-
mwrd-plant-battles-nutrient-pollution)

“What it does is essentially recovers the phosphorous and the nitrogen in the
wastewater at the Stickney plant and coverts that into a high-grade, slow-
release fertilizer that can be used for all sorts of agricultural
applications.”

------
spitfire
Cyprus has been using sewage to irrigate crops for ages. What's different here
is they're using to build greenways to stop desert creep. Very cool.

It used to be that you couldn't even flush toilet paper in Cyprus - you had to
use a separate bin to this side. I expect more sewage reuse in the future.
Expect in ~50years time for it to be exceptional to release any sewage into
nature.

Apart from sewage being useful for irrigation, it's also a goldmine of
minerals, and drugs to reclaim. I expect the same to happen with garbage dumps
slowly. We already divert aluminum cans and paper, slowly the rest will be
reclaimed too.

------
ChuckMcM
I think this is a great idea! Does anyone from Egypt have an opinion of how
far along this is? I ask because I thought "Cool, let's check that out on
Google maps." and got this
:[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Serapium+Forest/@30.486290...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Serapium+Forest/@30.4862906,32.2285727,1267m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x14f8670d8e69136b:0x4c05d910662d56db!8m2!3d30.4862906!4d32.2307614)
Which shows a fairly aspirational project rather than a forest.

------
RenRav
How exactly is wastewater distributed throughout the 500 acres? Article says a
system of pipes. Is it percolating throughout the entirety of the pipes or are
there just a few endpoints with massive ponds? Really interesting read.

~~~
ficklepickle
It looks like drip irrigation. It is more efficient, especially in arid
climates.

------
lordgrenville
This reminded me of a recent _Economist_ [1] article about China's "Great
Green Wall" around the Gobi. Per the article scientists think the tree wall
might not actually prevent desertification, and that there are potential
externalities from planting masses of non-native vegetation.

Nonetheless it sounds really cool and I hope the sceptics are wrong!

[1] I found an archived link but I wasn't able to view it for more than a
second in the browser. In the end I just curl-ed it to see the source:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191208001344/http://www.econom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191208001344/http://www.economist.com/china/2019/05/18/chinas-
desert-taming-green-great-wall-is-not-as-great-as-it-sounds)

------
the8472
Is this it?
[https://goo.gl/maps/mqtoyiSgzFbU8xkA6](https://goo.gl/maps/mqtoyiSgzFbU8xkA6)
Why would one call it 500 mile forest?

~~~
SECProto
The title and one place in the body call it 500 acre, while one other place
calls it 500 mile.

500 square miles is 320,000 acres. (500 miles) squared is 160,000,000 acres.

One other place in the body refers to 1,600,000 acres being viable to
reforest.

I think it was just a typo for 500 acre.

~~~
WaitWaitWha
And, the narrator, in the video at 5:49, calls it 240 hectares, which is
593.0524 acres.

------
nielsbjerg
What a brilliant idea. I wonder if the same method would be applicable for
growing rice in dry areas?

~~~
foxhop
Great question!

It's not safe to grow veggies and grains with human manures.

For safety, the human manure should be used as an input feedstock for growing
and expanding forest.

Then we use the forest's outputs as feed stock for grains and veggies and
fruits and trees.

The forest outputs are leaves and wood, both of which may be processed into
composts, or used as mulches for veggies, orchards, and grains.

This is what I practice.

~~~
ultimape
Have you explored humaneur production? It strikes me that properly composting
the waste ought to be enough to destroy any problematic bacteria. Would love
to know what you ran into that may have prevented doing that. Been thinking
about incorporating regenerative systems to build a food forest and trying to
figure out safely handling biowaste. Even goose poop is potentially toxic.

~~~
foxhop
Yes you can properly compost human manure, to make it safe... But the process
is more complicated and involves processes which cannot be skipped. I would
rather do less work and be safer.

This means I simply don't use human manure on my agriculture crops, I use it
in my forested areas.

That said, I do use urine in my grass/leaf compost, and recently I started
charging biochar with human urine. Urine is much safer that feces.

------
weberc2
> The federal effort, called the National Program for the Safe Use of Treated
> Sewage Water for Afforestation is going a long way towards achieving the
> country’s commendable ambitions voiced in the 1992 UN Rio conference on
> climate change—because so many trees can soak up hundreds of tons of CO2.

My understanding is that commercial forests like these don't generally capture
the carbon, depending on how the harvested wood is used.

~~~
samatman
A forest will be carbon negative regardless of how the harvested wood is used.
Forests increase soil depth through dropping leaves or needles, and by light-
starving prior growth. The trees also leave behind roots, a substantial
fraction of the total organism weight.

The vast majority of carbon in a tree is from the air, so the sum is a net
win. Most wood is also put to long-lasting uses, or made into paper which is
eventually buried.

But even burning trees for power, while short-sighted, is net carbon negative,
due to the first set of reasons I've mentioned.

~~~
brokensegue
i'm no expert but don't the roots (and everything else left behind) rot away
and release co2?

~~~
ph0rque
Most of the CO2 is captured in soil. And there is a very good chance that such
good soil will sprout other plants, continuing the carbon capture cycle. (In
fact, dead trees in the forests are sometimes called tree nurseries.) So the
effect is net-carbon-capture.

~~~
ph0rque
(I meant carbon, not CO2)

------
ncmncm
Why do "scientists" always get credit for this stuff? Sounds to me like
engineers, technicians, plumbers, and foresters did it.

------
BurningFrog
PSA: 500 acre = 2.02 km²

------
whyenot
Sewage water tends to be high in salt. Especially in a desert where there is
high evaporation and low rainfall, irrigating with this type of water
increases soil salinity, eventually to the point where it is toxic to native
plants and most crop plants. They will get greenery and good growth for a
while, and then as salt accumulates over the years, the plants will start
dying and they will have poisoned the soil to the point where almost nothing
will grow on it anymore.

Great PR, but in the long term, it’s a lousy idea. We have many decades of
knowledge on how salination plays out in desert agriculture.

------
jmartrican
Anyone know of any similar projects in the US? I think we also have similar
desertification issues here too.

------
jacobwilliamroy
Which plants are they using?

~~~
jagger27
Second paragraph:

> 10 miles west of the Suez Canal—you would see bountiful forests of
> eucalyptus, teak, and mahogany trees limned against the orange sand and blue
> sky of the Sahara?

I see no reason to use anything but native plants.

~~~
pacaro
Which makes eucalyptus problematic. Its introduction to California has done an
incredible amount of damage, especially because the ecosystem can't process
it, the bugs etc that can eat eucalyptus leaves and wood don't exist outside
of Australia

