Nicewicz Farm

Apple Maggots (IPM)

Peach Tree

Lay of the Land

Environmental students travelled to the 30-acre, third generation Nicewicz Farm located on 100 acres of land in Bolton, MA and the Nashua River Watershed. At 1200 trees putting out about 4,000 bushels (40lbs/bushel)/year, apple trees are the farm’s dominant crop. A non-native species, apple trees are easy prey for pests such as the the apple maggot, leaf miner, apple scab, and plum curculio and so require pesticide management. The Nicewicz Farm has implemented Integrated Pest Management (IPM) – a method of monitoring pest life cycles, population density, etc. and utilizing traps to optimize the effectiveness and minimize the amount of species-targeted pesticide applications. As a result Nicewicz uses 75% less pesticides compared to the older technique of broad spectrum pesticide applications. The farm also reminds us of the diversity of apple varieties: their 17 to the 1,000′s that exist worldwide.

Buffone Garden Day 2

WA Environmental Science students spent a second class period harvesting crops and preparing the local Buffone Garden for winter. There was a surprised siting of a hawk atop of Rader (photo below)

Creating urban gardens for food production is a potentially transformative act in terms of community building, broad and dynamic virtues of cultivating growth, decreasing carbon emissions and run-off pollution, and biological/ecological field study opportunities, among other benefits.

Neighborhood Garden Work

Environmental Science students from the class of 2012 spent the morning harvesting crops from the Charlie Buffone Garden on Aetna street. The garden is a community garden managed by Oak Hill CDC. Produce from the garden is donated to neighborhood residence.This past summer members of the WA community tended to the garden and ES students will spend some time here harvesting as well as using the garden as a means for studying agriculture in Massachusetts. Soil for the garden came from Worcester residents’ yard compost, which is formed at the Worcester Recycling Center on Ballard street. The class has asked the question what can be grown in state? On Aetna street tomatoes, corn, squash, beans, peppers, cabbage, eggplant, lettuce, pumpkin, cucumber, herbs, and more can grow. What nutrients do these foods supply? What are the benefits of planting corn, beans, and squash together? Where did this practice originate and why? What conditions are needed for the plants to grow? What type of soil? The soil for the garden came from Worcester residents’ yard compost, which is formed at the Worcester Recycling Center on Ballard street. Climate change has been addressed as a major environmental concern by the class, how does producing food in this manner effect carbon dioxide emissions (the primary green house gas -GHG-), aslo known as our carbon footprint. Click on the agriculture page above for more information on agriculture and the lessons the Buffone Garden has to offer.

Whitin Mill – Greening of the Blackstone

Plaza

Dennis Rice

Pagoda

Tulip wood Soundboards

Old water turbine

Mumford River

Art Gallery

Whitin Mill

The Whitin Mill (built in 1826) rising up along the Mumford river- tributary to the 45 mile long Blackstone River-has recently been transformed, along with three adjacent buildings including an old forge with an intact foundation from 1772, through a five year sustainable renovation project led by Alternatives. True to the spirit of innovation that drove the Whitin Mill to become the worlds leader in textile machinery manufacturing (cotton spinning rings produced through the 1970′s) Alternatives has delievered a green, “social capital” rich complex comprised of a theater, offices, art studio space, apartments, and a restaurant. 100% of HVAC demand will come from 5 geothermal wells dug down 1500 feet to 52 degree F water, saving $60,000/year in heating/cooling costs. Power for the buildings will be provided by solar and hydro power. 5% of the property’s 240,000 kW-hr annual demand will come from 32 solar panels (12,000 kW-hrs a year) while the remaining 80% will come from a soon to be completed 37 kW hydro turbine (320 kW-hrs/year) which will sell power at night back to the power company translating in savings of over $30,000 from unpaid utility bills and an additional $12,000+ from selling back to the grid.

95 % of the materials from the site were recycled, including the use of a diseased tulip tree that was cut and boarded for use as sound control panels in the theater. Built wood parts were routinely reused for flooring and the deck of the plaza is made from recycled plastic-wood composite. Take a tour yourself, it is an inspired work for an inspiring future, especially for the slumbering Blackstone Valley.

For more information go to http://www.telegram.com/article/20080422/NEWS/804220498

and http://www.alternativesnet.org/whitin_mill_restoration.asp

Electronic Recycling Plant in Worcester,MA

Andrew McManus, METECH GENERAL MANGER, displays a curcuit board.

The WA Environmental Science classes travelled about a mile from school, just across the start of the Blackstone River along route 146, to the Metech International facility (www.metech-arm.com) in order to learn about the  scale (1,000,000 lbs/month) and  3 tier process of recycling electronic waste (reuse, recovery, and reclamation) at Metech.

In 2005, 20-50 million tons of “e-srap” (anything with a chord) were produced in worldwide. In 2007 the US e-scrapped 500 million personal computers. Metech processes electronic equipment for metal reclamation (gold, platinum, silver to copper and aluminum, etc.), while sending off plastics, cardboard, and toxic heavy metals such cadmium and mercury for recycling and/or hazardous waste handling.

misc electronic

Plastic wrap

Shredded Copper.

Reclaimed copper

Shredded Curcuit Board

Silverbars

Shredder

stereo equipment

Lead Acid Battery

Magnetic Recycler

curcuit board

cellphones

For Flow Charts of recycling process click below:

material-flow-no-animation-no-1

material-flow-no-animation-no-2

material-flow-no-animation-no-3

The Nuclear Option

Worcester Academy gets approximately 27% – as compared to a 20% national average- of its electricity from nuclear energy: fission of 2-3% enriched Uranium-235.

The benefits of nuclear are the enormous amount of energy that fissionable U-235 releases. One gram of U-235 (depending on enrichment level) produce the same amount of heat energy as burning 6,000 pounds of coal when used to heat water into steam which in turn spins a turbine to generate electricity. Further, there are no greenhouse gas emissions, electricity can be produced cheaply (though this could be argued against given special insurance policies for nuclear and unsettled costs for nuclear waste management), and in theory nuclear fuel can be reprocessed many times over. Capacity of New England nuclear reactor plants (see photo) is as follows:

Location- Name- Capacity
Maine- Wiscasett Maine Yankee (closed) 850 MW
CT- Haddam Neck Plant (closed) 590 MW
Millstone Nuclear Niantic Bay, Waterford (unit
closed) 652 MW
Unit 2 900MW
Unit 3 1200 MW
VT- Vermont Yankee, Vernon, VT 540 MW
NH- Seabrook Nuclear Station, Seabrook, NH 1200 MW*
MA- Yankee Nuclear, Rowe, MA (closed) 185 MW*
Plymouth Station, Plymouth, MA 655MW
Approximate Total: 4,500 MW (operating)

However, reprocessing fuel is dangerous (particularly if spent plutonium is involved, which can be isolated easily using chemical means to make a bomb but is rare in the US for energy production) and there are currently no operating reprocessing plants in the United States. Complications with nuclear energy also include managing nuclear waste which contains lethal and carcinogenic radioactive materials with half lives ranging from a few dats to 10’s of 1,000’s of years [Pu-239:1/2 life=24,360 years: alpha emissions, cocentrates in bones/lings, Sr-90: 1/2 life= 28.8 years: beta emissions: concentrates in bone and teeth, I-131: 1/2 life=8days: beta and gamma: thyroid, Cs-137:1/2life=30 years: beta and gamma: whole body] The many waste products of nuclear fission, such as these, must be handled without mistake and need to be stored securely for 100,000’s of years. Current solutions have included underground storage in geological stable caves. Currently there are over 50,000 metric tons of nuclear waste in the U.S., ( click for details: us-nuclear-waste.pdf ) most of which is stored in water pools on-site of the power plants (see Yankee Rowe photo). Over 3,000 tons of waste is stored in New England Power Nuclear Power Plants (see photos).

Some point out the security issues of transporting the waste through highway, water, and railway to waste collection sites such as the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Studies have, also, shown and critics point out ways that nuclear plants are not secure form terrorist attacks.

For further explanation and more information on nuclear science click on MITcourse nuclear info.jpg

Many scientists studying energy supply and climate change remediation insist that nuclear power needs to be part of the solution.

Essential questions:

1) How many nuclear power plants would need to be built to meet increasing world energy demands and after the end of oil?

2. What is the risk analysis for nuclear fuel procurement and waste production management, transportation, as well as attacks on nuclear facilities? What are the realities and complexities of storing nuclear waste?

3. What is the economic structure and conditions for past, current, and future nuclear power plants?

4. What are the numbers for the world’s current nuclear fuel sources? What will they be in the future?

5. What impact does uranium mining and reprocessing have on the environment, workers, etc.?

6. What % of efficiency as a resource unto itself would be needed to replace the use of nuclear, how could this number be achieved?

WA Fossil Fuel Heating System

Up until the 1970′s WA heated its campus by burning coal in a 1940 model boiler (middle photo above) located underneath the Megaron. Water was boiled into steam and pumped through large pipes (top right) throughout all of campus. This centralized heating system lost vast amounts of heat energy during transfer through contact with the cold earth, and by burning coal, the dirtiest of the three major fossil fuels, emitted carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carcinogenic hydrocarbons and particulate matter, mercury, and arsenic.

WA used the same boiler when it switched over to heating oil #6, a thick high sulfur content fuel.
At some point in the 1990’s WA began decentralizing its heating system, placing gas boilers (below middle) in each building. Cleaner less polluting natural gas is burned to heat up water which is then pumped (photo of motors, below right) in pipes throughout the building in the form of hot water rather than steam. In 2003, WA installed oil #2 (lower sulfur content) boilers (below left) to replace the old Megaron boiler, the only campus system burning oil.

WA typically burns up to 35,000 gallons of oil #2 to heat Walker, Megaron and Adams Hall, and 176,000 therms of gas for all buildings on campus.

Worcester Municipal Water Filtration System (click photos)

Over 2.5 billion people in the world lack access to sanitary water. As a result millions of people die every year due to water related illness. Living and going to school in Worcester we enjoy some of the highest quality water in the world. The Worcester Water Filtration Plant filters about 22 million gallons of water every day by collecting water from 10 reservoirs (containing 8 billion gallons) located throughout the Blackstone and Nashua River Watersheds, running it through a 10-step filtration process, and then using gravity and pumps to deliver it through 600 miles of piping to Worcester and surrounding towns. Worcester water meets every EPA Safe Drinking Water Act standard, with the exception of a few detected cases of lead due to old piping in homes ( the solution to which is to simply run the faucet for at least 30 seconds to flush out stagnant water before filling up larger water containers). Click on Worcester’s Water Quality Report 2006 below, for a detailed report.

Worcester Water Quality Report 2006

Photos clockwise from top left.

1) Holden Reservoir #1 (729 Million Gallons) view to the south. 2) Water entering the plant. Students look down into the mirrored plant designed 2 60 in. diameter intake pipes, each of which have a rated capacity of 50 MGD.3) Air must be dessicated to prevent corrosion of ozone generating tubes. 4) Students looking into a $300,000 ozone generator used to break down organic membranes thus disinfecting and improving the taste of water. 5) View of ozone generating tubes: long glass tubes with metal coating conducting electricity contact pressurized dry air to break apart O2 and then form O3 (ozone), which is a ground level lung irritant and smog forming compound but in the upper atmosphere a UV ray absorbing compound as well as effective water sanitizer. 6) Excess O3 is converted back to O2. 7) Flocculation, slow mixing with aluminum sulfate and ionic polymer to create flocs that will be unable to pass through the next step. 8) Students look down into a direction filtration tank where 5.3 gallons of water per square foot per minute are being filtered through five feet of anthracite coal, one foot of sand, and one foot of gravel. 9) A graph shows the difference in turbidity (measure of cloudiness) as result coagulation (rapid mixing) and flocculation.

Cooper’s Hilltop Dairy Farm

In the last week of October with the last of the feed corn still standing tall, W.A. students visited Cooper’s Hilltop Dairy Farm located in Rochdale, MA just a few miles west of New Balance Fields. Pictured is Marjorie Cooper discussing glass bottled milk. The farm was acquired by the Cooper Family in 1918 and today is comprised of 40 acres of corn and 105 acres of pasture. Crops are grown in rotation to maintain soil fertity and manage soil erosion. Cooper’s produces 100’s of gallons of “hormone free” milk each day for local sale from their cows that they raise on pasture and Cooper’s corn, using supplemental feed for nutrient balancing. The farm also sells honey and maple syrup from Massachusetts, local cheese, and other various foods. http://www.coopershilltopfarm.com/

Clockwise from upper right. 1) Cooper’s cows grazing on pasture when the season allows (photo was taken earlier in the season) 2) Harvested Corn Field: this season the corn grew 10 feet high.Notice that pasture to the right is planted downhill from the corn plot to prevent erosion of the fertile soil. 3) Cow being milked: the cows begin milking at 2 years of age (14 human years) and produce about 5 gallons/day. 4)Students with owner Marjorie Cooper

Worcester Academy Fall Harvest