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Digging in the Kenyan soil gets harder the deeper that you go. It appears to be almost like a black clay.
Break it up with a bar and scoop it out by hand. Very tedious and time consuming, but she was a trooper.
I know its fallen down
Got my headphones on and I won't hear a sound
No its all broke down
Eyes out on the road but no-one comes along, when you want them to.
Neil Halstead.
This is the way to dig razor clams, on one knee, using a clam shovel. It's much easier on your back than a clam gun but you have to act fast with the shovel. I also recommend hip boots or just plain old shoes. Mid-calf boots fill up with water when a sneaker wave comes in.
The razor clams grow to about 5 or 6 inches on the Washington coast. The farther north, the colder the water, the bigger the clams.
Shot in 1965, ektachrome transparency film, with a Yashica twin lens reflex. Note the tide table peeking out of the shirt pocket. That's the holy bible of the Pacific north coast and available at all local businesses.
A small army of laborers picks away at the snow- and ice-encrusted switches at Tower A, just north of North Station.
A number of neighbors joined us last weekend to salvage several plants and landscaping materials from the site of the future Brooklyn and Roosevelt light rail stations. The salvage was in advance of our demolition work at the site. The plants, including Barberry, Nandina and Boxwood, were available on a first-come first-served basis.
Beach outing during Easter Weekend. Picture was shot by a friend and then later modified using photoshop for grainyness and sepia.
It’s a short ride on a sunny, arid morning down Congress Street in downtown Tucson, Arizona, to the dusty field that’s home to the Rio Nuevo landfills.
Right now, Nearmont, the smallest of three landfills on the site, doesn’t look at all like one. It’s just a bumpy 90-acre stretch of wide-open, dusty land beneath the shadow of downtown’s skyscrapers and against the bone-dry Santa Cruz River.
Drive back about 1,000 feet on the utility road, and you’ll see a chain link fence with an open gate. The chain link surrounds a square plot of land, fifty feet long and wide. On the plot at exact intervals is a nine-point grid of PVC piping penetrating the landfill beneath. A small construction trailer sits against the fence. And across from that, a large utility box, wires running into the ground.
To the untrained eye, it looks to be nothing more than a Tucson city water experiment. Or to the more suspicious in the desert, a covert government project. But this experimental PVC pipe grid - and what it’s doing underneath the landfill - could change the way brownfields sites of tomorrow are remediated.
Past, Future and Present
Behind the chain link fence is the City of Tucson’s bioreactor project. It is the physical beginning of a monumental and aggressive brownfields land remediation and redevelopment project. The landfill will become part of Rio Nuevo - an entire city district in the heart of Tucson’s downtown.
Projected, Rio Nuevo will take at least 20 years and $350 million to complete. The new bioreactor technology on Nearmont is paving the way for the Rio Nuevo of the future: an entire city district that will pay homage to the city’s historic past as one of the oldest settlements in the West.
In fact, archeologists have found that people have lived in the Tucson area as far back as 2,600 years ago. What’s now Nearmont was once part of the land where the San Augustin Mission was established in mid 1700s. The old Mission included a convento - a priest’s residence and trade school - a mission garden, a chapel, a granary and smaller storage buildings, the entire grounds surrounded by a wall. By 1840, the Mission had finally been abandoned.
As the Mission ruins disappeared into the late 1800s and early 1900s, the site became home to a clay pit. That ceased operations for good in the 1940’s, until it became its final incarnation: a 1950’s-era city dump. For twelve years, the site saw the only the city’s trash, until it was closed and forgotten in 1962. Thirty-seven years passed until Rio Nuevo had its rebirth.
In November of 1999, Tucson politicians put Proposition 400 in front of the voters - its purpose to raise $60 million in Arizona state tax money over ten years to help fund the Rio Nuevo project. It passed by a convincing 62% margin.
Among the planned projects at Rio Nuevo are a full-scale recreation of the San Augustin Mission and adjoining Cultural Plaza. Also planned are an Arizona Historical Museum, an American Indian Cultural Center and a Mercado with retail stores. More downtown housing will be added. Future additions include the Sonoran Sea Aquarium, the Tucson Science Center, an IMAX Theatre, an expanded Tucson Convention Center, and a City Visitor’s Center.
But the completed vision of Rio Nuevo is some years away. What Rio Nuevo has now is what’s behind the chain link fence - the experimental bioreactor.
100 Years in 40 Months
Underneath the Nearmont landfills lie decades of Tucson refuse. Between 15 and 50 feet of it.
The problem: the trash beneath the landfill must be degraded and made non-reactive. That, added with the methane gas landfills naturally produce make it too undesirable for building. Otherwise, any construction on the land would be at least century away - the time it would take the garbage in Nearmont to degrade naturally.
Tucson’s Office of Environmental Management (OEM), however, was preparing a solution - the bioreactor. But remediation technology like it had never been used before. If it did work, and proved safe and cost-effective, it would be used to remediate the other landfills.
The process it performs is called enhanced aerobic degradation. Simply, the nine-spot PVC pipe grid - dug under the ground and inside the landfill - naturally accelerates the landfill degradation by pumping controlled amounts of air and water into the refuse itself.
According to the data OEM has collected so far, the bioreactor will break down and settle the refuse, as well as eliminating the landfill’s natural methane production, in about 40 months. The end result: Composted land, ready for development.
Not only that, Tucson’s bioreactor has proven safe and cost-effective. Most importantly, it works. So well, that it's being made into a full-scale system for use on all three landfills.
Trenches were dug for the waddles to be buried 3/4 under ground, trenches were also used for walking the slope as we worked to minimize sliding and erosion damage from working on the slope. Waddles were buried with mulch and a few sprigs left unburied that will leaf next spring. The buried waddles will root and stabilize the hill with time.
Recording a find from the Romano-British mixed-rite cemetery.
To find out more about the project visit: www.wessexarch.co.uk/projects/kent/margate
Compositionally Challenged week 38 is KISS (Keep It Simple!)
The close crop keeps this composition simple. Plus, gardening is a simple pleasure.
San Diego Zoo - San Diego, California - Anna the Snow Leopard was born at the Memphis Zoo in Memphis, Tennessee on 3/29/03 to Hailey (5/3/95-3/8/14) and Tash (5/30/92-12/15/09). She has lived at the San Diego Zoo since 4/6/06.
As part of the Zoo's Centennial Celebration, the Asian leopards were given special treats, including bloodsicles and carcasses. Anna is seen here enjoying a carcass.
Ein Bagger auf der Großbaustelle Hafencity (Hamburg).
Digging the Hafencity (new part of town at Hamburg, Germany).
Labour Corps digging, Western Front, during World War I. This photograph shows five men of one of the Labour Corps groups, probably the South African Native Labour Contingent (SANLC) digging sand under the supervision of a native NCO. The purpose of their digging is unclear but it is possible that they were filling the ever-necessary sandbags.
The Labour Corps included many non-European groups such as the South Africans, Egyptians, Chinese, Cape Coloured and Indian Corps. They were not only restricted from contact with white Europeans but were also segregated into different racially-determined Corps.
[Original reads: 'Digging sand.']
Since the snow itself is taller than he is, Tuck resorts to following on our heels and pawing at chunks of snow.