"Nitrogen is an essential component of any plan for reducing world hunger,
poverty, and disease. When used in excess, however, N becomes an important
pollutant. This duality is one of the major challenges that humanity must
face to ensure environmental sustainability. The complex problems of N
cannot be tackled individually, but rather the
solutions must engage a large community that encompasses a broad spectrum of
professionals." (see St. Paul Meeting Announcements for statement source)
What does this have to do with St. Paul? I'd like to emphasis the phrase
"one of the major challenges that humanity must face [is] to ensure
environmental sustainability." (text in brackets added)
The St. Paul ecosystem (as far as plants are concerned) consists of grasses,
trees and shrubs, flowers, and vegetable (or fruit) bearing plants. We
encourage their growth with the applications of fertilizers, which contain
nitrogen.
After we apply nitrogen to our yards, boulevards, green ways and golf
courses; it can be flushed into the ground water or off our yards as
surface runoff directly to the Mississippi River. Shallow nitrogen-charged
ground water can eventually leak into the Mississippi River or into
underlying water supply aquifers. The challange we face is to time
fertilizer applications to minimize these chemical discharges while
encouraging maximum plant growth. One approach is to apply yard chemicals
during the growing season.
All the above makes St. Paul sound as if it has a farming system. Which it
does. We have mainly a grass and tree plantation within our city. And we,
both individually and as a city, can take better advantage of our 'farm' by
better maintaining it for optimum production of useful products.
The principal useful products are woody materials, which end up as fuel in
the downtown St. Paul District Heating plant. Only, as a city, we do not
appear to be systematically harvesting wood by trimming boulevard trees.
Rather, we often let Mother Nature's tree and branch reduction service
catastrophically do the harvesting.
Therefore, I suggest the following project for the City of St. Paul, to be
done in conjunction with the U of M's ag school and Ramsey County. We should
work to determine the optimum sustainable yield characteristics and
corresponding inputs of the urban forest covering the boulevards and park
lands of St. Paul. Definition of a sustainable yield would allow for the
planning for and implementation of more locally sustainable energy
facilities within St. Paul (think RockTenn). Concurrretly, scientifically
contolled (or at least observed) application of fertilizers could reduce
contamination of adjacent and underlying water resources.
Mike Schoenberg
MacGroveland