Water Systems Around the World with Andrew Millison!

Carmen Porter: 00:00:24

Welcome to Song and Plants.

Carmen Porter: 00:00:26

My name is Carmen Porter.

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In this episode, I was joined by Andrew Millison.

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His extensive work as a videographer documenting innovative water systems

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internationally and developing compelling content for Oregon

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State University's Permaculture Design course have made his YouTube

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channel invaluable to anyone seeking insights into the workings of water.

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I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Carmen Porter: 00:00:54

So welcome to Song and Plants.

Carmen Porter: 00:00:56

Would you mind introducing yourself?

Andrew Millison: 00:00:57

Sure.

Andrew Millison: 00:00:58

My name's Andrew Millison and primarily I'm an instructor at Oregon State

Andrew Millison: 00:01:04

University, where I teach permaculture.

Andrew Millison: 00:01:07

I have been teaching permaculture for over 20 years, and I first studied

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permaculture, over 25 years ago.

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I've lived in a lot of different climate zones.

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I grew up on the temperate East coast in Philadelphia.

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I've lived in Arizona, spent 14 years there in the high desert.

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It's kind of where I first learned about permaculture and

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started studying water systems.

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And then for the last 14 years I've been here in Corvallis, Oregon, which

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is a maritime temperate area here in the Willamette Valley, in the Pacific

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Northwest of the United States.

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And in recent years, I've done a lot of traveling, documenting

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different permaculture and water sites all over the world, including

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in India and in Mexico and in Egypt.

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I just got back from Hawaii documenting the Ahupua'a, Hawaii Indigenous

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Watershed Scale agricultural system.

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So I guess to some degree I'm a bit of a, of a storyteller now where a lot of

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my work is kind of focusing on video.

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And I'm really happy to talk to you.

Andrew Millison: 00:02:21

Thank you so much for having me on the podcast.

Carmen Porter: 00:02:23

Thank you.

Carmen Porter: 00:02:24

What got you interested in water systems?

Andrew Millison: 00:02:27

Well, You know, water is the foundation of design, of permaculture

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design, regenerative land design.

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Water is the basis of any specific design where, you know, it

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comprises the bones of the system.

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So you can't put the other layers of a design on until you have the

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basis, the foundation of water.

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So, from water, typically, then we put on pathways, then we put on

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trees and other perennial plantings.

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Then we create structures and land subdivisions and

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all these kinds of things.

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But, the natural boundaries of the landscape are the drainage

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basins, and the ridges and hills that surround those drainage basins.

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And so there's this logic, this innate logic in water.

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And when you understand how water functions with the ecology, when you

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understand how water moves through landscapes and determines different

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soil types and determines what types of vegetation grow and all this

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stuff, it's like water is, it's the thing that binds everything.

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It's like the connecting tissue of the ecosystem.

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And so I feel like all the other layers of permaculture design are really

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important, but until you understand the role of water and how to properly

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design for water, then you can't really do a good job designing whole systems.

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So I kind of make it my focus, to teach mostly about water because

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I feel like it's providing people with a good foundation in order to

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construct different regenerative types of systems in all different contexts.

Carmen Porter: 00:04:25

Hm.

Carmen Porter: 00:04:26

So using that basis, I suppose that would even go across different climates

Carmen Porter: 00:04:32

if you're using topography and sort of land shape to understand water.

Carmen Porter: 00:04:38

But what innovative techniques have you seen in your travels where

Carmen Porter: 00:04:43

people have climate challenges?

Andrew Millison: 00:04:46

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:04:47

Well, I mean, obviously deserts and dry lands are the first place that, you know,

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when we think of water and we think of really needing to have water design.

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I'll give one example , I also do design work for clients and so I had

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a design project, an eco village design in the western desert of Egypt.

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And this is the Sahara Desert where like literally this area has not

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had measurable rainfall in 13 years.

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I mean, it's an extraordinarily dry climate where it's difficult to even

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design for rainwater runoff because the dominant pattern in the landscape is

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actually blowing sand and sand dunes, which obscures the water flow pattern.

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And basically this whole area, it's an area of about 80,000 people in this

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oasis, is all living off of like ancient groundwater that was deposited there,

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in the ground during an era when the whole climate was much wetter in North

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Africa, in the Sahara Desert area.

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So, you know, seeing extremes like that, where you're not even designing

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for rainfall necessarily, but you're designing for the efficient

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use of a non-renewable resource.

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I mean, that's kind of one extreme level.

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But then, you know, on the other side of extremes are extremely wet areas, right?

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And so I also had the fortune of visiting, I guess it was just earlier

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this year, the chinampa system of Mexico City, which is the last vestiges of

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the ancient Aztec agricultural system built in the basin of Mexico City.

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It's called the Valley of Mexico, valle de Mexico, it's

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like a giant crater basically.

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So you've got all these mountains ringing this high elevation valley

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and all the water for thousands and thousands and thousands of years

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drained down and formed this big shallow lake in the bottom of this crater.

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And that's where the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was developed

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there, which after the Spanish came and conquered the Aztecs that

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became the basin of Mexico City.

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And so, you know, this is an example where, like how do you take an aquatic

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system, a system that's completely a wet area and turn it into something

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that is both productive and beneficial for the ecosystem, as well as can

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handle the level of pollution that you get in a really wet area at the

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bottom of a system where everything filters down to that bottom area.

Andrew Millison: 00:07:44

So, the water design, I mean, it's really like, it's really fascinatingly,

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diverse in all of these different extreme types of environments.

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And I was saying the introduction, I just returned, we are filming a video

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in Hawaii with the nation of Hawaii.

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It's the sovereign indigenous nation.

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It's a group of native Hawaiians who got a piece of land through protest from

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the government about 30 years ago and now they are actively restoring their

Andrew Millison: 00:08:19

traditional watershed scale system.

Andrew Millison: 00:08:24

The amazing thing that I learned there is, you know, in their system for the

Andrew Millison: 00:08:31

farmer, this is a very wet area by the way, this is the wet side of Oahu.

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So this is an area that is, you know, it's basically the wet tropics.

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It barely has a dry season there.

Andrew Millison: 00:08:42

It's incredibly lush, lots of flowing waters, waterfalls, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:08:47

And traditionally they grew taro, and the farmer from this system, they

Andrew Millison: 00:08:53

weren't worried about their water supply coming into their system, they were most

Andrew Millison: 00:08:59

worried about what they were returning back into the system after bringing

Andrew Millison: 00:09:04

the water in and flooding their taro patches and growing their crops there.

Andrew Millison: 00:09:09

They were most concerned that they were returning a clean and adequate

Andrew Millison: 00:09:14

amount of water back into the stream for downstream users to use.

Andrew Millison: 00:09:19

So it was like a sacred responsibility to being a part of the total water cycle.

Andrew Millison: 00:09:26

And so that was really, something that, I feel like we should all,

Andrew Millison: 00:09:30

actually, that's a perspective I feel like we should all really be adopting.

Carmen Porter: 00:09:33

Absolutely.

Carmen Porter: 00:09:34

What methods were they using to purify the water?

Andrew Millison: 00:09:38

I mean, ideally the water wasn't dirty from the start.

Andrew Millison: 00:09:42

In the native system, they're bringing the water out of the stream and I mean,

Andrew Millison: 00:09:47

the crop, the taro is a wetland crop, and so when you have a taro field that is

Andrew Millison: 00:09:54

full, I mean I went to these, existing large taro fields over in Kauai and you

Andrew Millison: 00:10:00

know, the whole basin is like one solid mass of taro with these huge leaves.

Andrew Millison: 00:10:07

And so, I think the crop itself is doing a lot of filtration cuz it has

Andrew Millison: 00:10:12

a really extensive root system that is like permeating the whole basin.

Andrew Millison: 00:10:18

And so, part of it's like, making it, so, okay, when you're harvesting and

Andrew Millison: 00:10:22

you're disturbing the soil, how are you going to keep silt laden water

Andrew Millison: 00:10:27

for returning back into the stream?

Andrew Millison: 00:10:28

Because in their system, if you return silt laden water back in the

Andrew Millison: 00:10:32

stream, you're actually not being responsible to the water cycle.

Andrew Millison: 00:10:36

And there will be negative effects throughout the system.

Andrew Millison: 00:10:40

So there was a lot of just sort of vegetated ditches

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with a variety of plants.

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There was the taro patches themselves and then there was trees along.

Andrew Millison: 00:10:50

So there's like, sort of like the water was moving through a

Andrew Millison: 00:10:53

great diversity of plants before it returned back into the stream.

Carmen Porter: 00:10:57

I'm a little bit curious though, in the growing of taro, do

Carmen Porter: 00:11:01

they need to use pesticides or any other chemicals, or is it a fairly

Carmen Porter: 00:11:07

resilient crop that doesn't need to have

Andrew Millison: 00:11:11

Yeah.

Carmen Porter: 00:11:12

sorts of

Andrew Millison: 00:11:13

Yeah.

Carmen Porter: 00:11:13

interventions?

Andrew Millison: 00:11:14

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:11:15

Well, what I saw, I went to one area that was actually like a

Andrew Millison: 00:11:18

larger taro growing area, which is actually very rare in Hawaii.

Andrew Millison: 00:11:23

They say the most expensive food in Hawaii is like the native foods there, which

Andrew Millison: 00:11:28

is, it's very sad actually because that's the food that native people, there's

Andrew Millison: 00:11:33

bodies are most positively responsive to.

Andrew Millison: 00:11:37

But, taro came over with the canoes, basically they called it canoe food.

Andrew Millison: 00:11:43

So meaning that when the Polynesians basically arrived in Hawaii, taro was one

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of the things that they brought there.

Andrew Millison: 00:11:51

So, It's been grown there in that landscape for a long, long

Andrew Millison: 00:11:55

time and it's very adapted there.

Andrew Millison: 00:11:57

And so the place that I went was, was large scale.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:01

I mean, when I say large scale, I don't mean like thousands of acres, large scale.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:05

I mean like we went and saw, you know, in the neighborhood of like four to

Andrew Millison: 00:12:11

five acres of taro being grown maybe bigger, which actually for Hawaii

Andrew Millison: 00:12:15

is actually a fairly large amount.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:17

They didn't use any pesticides.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:18

It was, it was all organic.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:20

There's a lot of bird life that is interacting there in the taro patches

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because you're basically creating these wetlands and the wetlands are

Andrew Millison: 00:12:34

full of the taro plant, but then all the perimeter around there, there's

Andrew Millison: 00:12:37

lots of different plant species.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:39

So there really seemed like there was a supportive ecology and like

Andrew Millison: 00:12:44

lots of different birds landing in the different flooded fields.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:49

There's enough of an intact ecosystem.

Andrew Millison: 00:12:51

There's some like natural pest control there due to the

Andrew Millison: 00:12:56

diversity and, and different, you know, micro climates created.

Andrew Millison: 00:13:01

But the other example that would actually probably answer your question a

Andrew Millison: 00:13:05

little better was back to Mexico City.

Andrew Millison: 00:13:09

So the, the last vestiges of this Aztec flood based agriculture system

Andrew Millison: 00:13:15

where they built up these artificial peninsulas and islands within the shallow

Andrew Millison: 00:13:20

wetlands in order to grow crops on.

Andrew Millison: 00:13:23

But here in 2022, this is at the bottom of the Mexico City Basin.

Andrew Millison: 00:13:29

So, I mean, there's a lot of pollutants making their way down to this low

Andrew Millison: 00:13:34

area, especially because the poverty is so great that many people have

Andrew Millison: 00:13:39

been forced to basically squat on these kind of wetland areas that don't

Andrew Millison: 00:13:46

have proper, like sanitation, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:13:49

As far as toilets.

Andrew Millison: 00:13:52

And so they created bio filters by building, you might say gabions,

Andrew Millison: 00:14:02

which is a wire basket filled with rock, you know, so it's like a filter

Andrew Millison: 00:14:07

that water in order to get into the canals where they actually pull their

Andrew Millison: 00:14:10

irrigation water from they have to pass through these rock filled wire baskets

Andrew Millison: 00:14:16

that are planted with aquatic plants.

Andrew Millison: 00:14:18

And so the water has to pass through like this filter of rock and plant

Andrew Millison: 00:14:25

roots in order to get into the sort of inner part of the canal

Andrew Millison: 00:14:29

where water is being pulled from.

Andrew Millison: 00:14:31

And so that's like some, more like contemporary examples where I'm seeing

Andrew Millison: 00:14:37

water filtration integrated into traditional agricultural systems.

Carmen Porter: 00:14:42

To give a little bit of context, when they're

Carmen Porter: 00:14:45

building up those peninsulas, how do they keep them from eroding?

Carmen Porter: 00:14:51

How do they keep them intact since they've been there for so long?

Andrew Millison: 00:14:55

Yeah, the initial building process, and actually

Andrew Millison: 00:14:57

like, if you watch the video, we made a little mini-documentary

Andrew Millison: 00:15:01

it's on my YouTube channel.

Andrew Millison: 00:15:02

It's called Chinampas of Mexico, most productive agricultural

Andrew Millison: 00:15:07

system ever question mark.

Andrew Millison: 00:15:10

And I have some pretty good diagrams on there where actually sort of illustrate

Andrew Millison: 00:15:15

how these things are constructed.

Andrew Millison: 00:15:16

But basically they take, these willow branches, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:15:21

And they hammer them into the lake bed in the shape that

Andrew Millison: 00:15:26

they want their field to be in.

Andrew Millison: 00:15:29

And so these willow stakes are hammered down in, and then they weave other

Andrew Millison: 00:15:36

branches around, just kinda like you'd weave like a willow basket, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:15:41

In and out, in and out of these stakes.

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And so they create this framework, it's like a giant basket that's

Andrew Millison: 00:15:50

anchored into the lake bottom.

Andrew Millison: 00:15:52

And then they fill the inside of that basket in with brush and soil and

Andrew Millison: 00:15:59

lake mud and sort of like build up a big giant compost pile in there that

Andrew Millison: 00:16:04

will degrade over time and they put bunch of good like lake mud on the

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top they can plant directly into.

Andrew Millison: 00:16:13

And then those willow stakes that they hammered in to the lake bed to

Andrew Millison: 00:16:18

make the perimeter of this basket, they actually sprout, because

Andrew Millison: 00:16:24

Willow can just grow from cuttings.

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So they sprout and then they become like a living boundary.

Andrew Millison: 00:16:31

And then they sprout branches.

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They sprout roots, and then the roots tie together the

Andrew Millison: 00:16:37

boundary of the planting area.

Andrew Millison: 00:16:40

And so that's how it becomes anchored is by these, it's like a ahuejote willows is

Andrew Millison: 00:16:46

a particular variety that they use there.

Andrew Millison: 00:16:48

That's the same variety that's been used since even pre-Aztec times.

Andrew Millison: 00:16:53

Yeah.

Carmen Porter: 00:16:54

And the Biofilter is a newer addition to this system.

Andrew Millison: 00:17:01

Yeah.

Carmen Porter: 00:17:02

Are they particular about which plants they're putting into their

Carmen Porter: 00:17:06

biofilter to remove majority organic matter, or is it all types of pollutants?

Andrew Millison: 00:17:14

The main pollutants in this particular like location, well,

Andrew Millison: 00:17:18

I'll step, step back for a second and say at this point the whole system is

Andrew Millison: 00:17:23

actually fed by treated wastewater from a municipal wastewater treatment system.

Andrew Millison: 00:17:30

Right?

Andrew Millison: 00:17:31

So as far as the city's concerned, they're actually using this area as a way to

Andrew Millison: 00:17:38

take treated wastewater from a municipal system, and then they flood it into the

Andrew Millison: 00:17:44

whole chinampa area and then it recharges the groundwater and then they pull it out

Andrew Millison: 00:17:51

again for use for their municipal supply.

Andrew Millison: 00:17:56

So right now it's functioning like as a part of this larger scale water

Andrew Millison: 00:18:01

filtration from the whole city.

Andrew Millison: 00:18:04

Right?

Andrew Millison: 00:18:04

Does that make sense?

Andrew Millison: 00:18:05

Can you kind of picture that?

Andrew Millison: 00:18:06

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:18:07

So they're not really concerned with the pollutants from there.

Andrew Millison: 00:18:10

Although I would say that there's plenty of things that we would talk about, like,

Andrew Millison: 00:18:14

I don't know, how are they filtering like birth control and anti-depressants,

Andrew Millison: 00:18:20

you know, and that kind of thing that is difficult to actually filter out.

Andrew Millison: 00:18:24

But that aside, cuz I didn't really get into that.

Andrew Millison: 00:18:26

They basically consider that the water that's coming from the wastewater

Andrew Millison: 00:18:30

treatment plant as clean water.

Andrew Millison: 00:18:32

Right?

Andrew Millison: 00:18:33

But it's the, the real problem is like fecal coliform is like all of these

Andrew Millison: 00:18:40

squatters and just different housing that has grown up in the Chinampas

Andrew Millison: 00:18:46

with the poverty and the land pressure.

Andrew Millison: 00:18:48

So people are basically moving onto these chinampas in areas and then like they're

Andrew Millison: 00:18:54

just either digging holes or whatever, like they don't have a sanitation

Andrew Millison: 00:18:58

system, so they're basically like pooping in the water for the most part.

Andrew Millison: 00:19:01

So that is the main pollutant that they are worried about with these bio

Andrew Millison: 00:19:07

filters for removal of the pollutants.

Andrew Millison: 00:19:12

And so, you know, as far as the plants that they're using, I had the fortune

Andrew Millison: 00:19:17

when I used to live in Arizona, we had a permaculture course that I did with

Andrew Millison: 00:19:21

the Ecosa Institute in Prescott, Arizona.

Andrew Millison: 00:19:24

And we had Dr.

Andrew Millison: 00:19:25

John Todd, who's the guy who invented the living machine, the

Andrew Millison: 00:19:29

eco machines Ocean Arks Institute.

Andrew Millison: 00:19:31

He's just like a total sort of legend and inventor and pioneer

Andrew Millison: 00:19:36

for wastewater treatment systems.

Andrew Millison: 00:19:38

And we had him come and do a few days of workshops with us in Arizona.

Andrew Millison: 00:19:45

And one thing that he said, cuz you know, this is like a really,

Andrew Millison: 00:19:48

really common question, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:19:50

The really common question is like, what plants do you use, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:19:53

So we said" John, like, what plants do we use?"

Andrew Millison: 00:19:55

And he said "go to your local wetlands and the plants that you see in your

Andrew Millison: 00:20:00

local wetlands are actually gonna be the best plants to use" because all

Andrew Millison: 00:20:06

wetland plants have natural filtration qualities because where do wetlands sit

Andrew Millison: 00:20:14

within the greater watershed pattern?

Andrew Millison: 00:20:17

Right?

Andrew Millison: 00:20:17

Wetlands sit at the bottom.

Andrew Millison: 00:20:20

So naturally wetlands are getting animal carcasses and you know,

Andrew Millison: 00:20:27

dead animals and dead vegetation.

Andrew Millison: 00:20:29

I mean everything from the ecosystem that's like dying and rotting

Andrew Millison: 00:20:34

finds its way down through the movement of water into wetlands.

Andrew Millison: 00:20:38

So wetlands are just naturally, all wetland plants basically are naturally

Andrew Millison: 00:20:43

like purifying because of the nature of where you find them within the ecosystem.

Andrew Millison: 00:20:48

So he said "go and find your local species and as much of a diversity as you can,

Andrew Millison: 00:20:55

and that's the best place to start".

Andrew Millison: 00:20:58

So, You know, they had plants in these bio filters that looked

Andrew Millison: 00:21:03

similar to a lot of the wetlands plants that we have around here.

Andrew Millison: 00:21:05

You know, different types of reeds and sedges and cattails

Andrew Millison: 00:21:09

and that kind of thing.

Andrew Millison: 00:21:10

But you know, there was a lot of different types of plants that

Andrew Millison: 00:21:12

I guess they've probably just stuck in whatever they could.

Andrew Millison: 00:21:14

To some degree, it's a little bit less scientific than you'd think about

Andrew Millison: 00:21:21

what plants to include as long as you go by the maximum diversity of what

Andrew Millison: 00:21:28

will grow in your climate, per se.

Andrew Millison: 00:21:32

And even like where we live in the wintertime, when plants die

Andrew Millison: 00:21:38

back, okay, there's not as much biological activity, but a lot of the

Andrew Millison: 00:21:42

filtration happens with the bacteria on plant roots and as the wastewater

Andrew Millison: 00:21:49

moves through those plant roots.

Andrew Millison: 00:21:50

So even when plants are dormant, there's still a lot of biological

Andrew Millison: 00:21:55

activity happening in the water.

Andrew Millison: 00:21:58

And so there is, you know, some degree of treatment happening even

Andrew Millison: 00:22:02

in the winter time here, for example.

Carmen Porter: 00:22:07

You touched on a couple things that I'd love

Carmen Porter: 00:22:09

to delve into a little further.

Carmen Porter: 00:22:11

One is you mentioned the eco machine.

Andrew Millison: 00:22:14

Yeah.

Carmen Porter: 00:22:15

Would you mind explaining that just a little bit?

Andrew Millison: 00:22:18

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:22:18

Well, you know, John Todd basically came up with this concept of taking

Andrew Millison: 00:22:24

the idea that wetland plants are natural filters and creating

Andrew Millison: 00:22:31

artificial wetlands like in tanks.

Andrew Millison: 00:22:35

In giant greenhouses, depending, like if the climate is really cold, you

Andrew Millison: 00:22:39

could actually make an artificial environment where you have a big

Andrew Millison: 00:22:42

greenhouse over a series of wetland tanks.

Andrew Millison: 00:22:45

And so the idea is that the wastewater comes in and that you have the

Andrew Millison: 00:22:54

different tanks that goes into, has like, as drastically different

Andrew Millison: 00:22:59

conditions as you can make in a sense.

Andrew Millison: 00:23:02

So it's like anaerobic, aerobic, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:23:05

To try to have different types of organisms to break the bonds of

Andrew Millison: 00:23:10

pollutants and where the water goes through like shockingly different

Andrew Millison: 00:23:15

environments, like I said, from anaerobic to aerobic would be the best example.

Andrew Millison: 00:23:19

And then it goes through this series of tanks that have subsequently like

Andrew Millison: 00:23:24

cleaner water and by the time you get to the end you actually have clean water.

Andrew Millison: 00:23:28

A lot of the systems that John Todd developed actually there's

Andrew Millison: 00:23:32

actually species can actually migrate between the tanks.

Andrew Millison: 00:23:36

So you can have like areas where the overflow pipe from one of the

Andrew Millison: 00:23:39

tanks to the next could actually be a place where like snails and

Andrew Millison: 00:23:42

fish could actually move through.

Andrew Millison: 00:23:44

So, you know, you might have it where the system gets shocked by

Andrew Millison: 00:23:49

some particular pollutant and the system might like retreat and sort

Andrew Millison: 00:23:53

of die back in the earlier tanks.

Andrew Millison: 00:23:55

Or you may have things like snails move to subsequently further tanks

Andrew Millison: 00:23:59

that are further from the pollutants.

Andrew Millison: 00:24:00

But then as that shock is mediated, bioremediated, then the organisms will

Andrew Millison: 00:24:08

find their way back into tanks that are closer to the source of the pollutants.

Andrew Millison: 00:24:12

So it's like creating this living system that has the ability to

Andrew Millison: 00:24:16

self-organize, taking maximum advantage of the filtration properties

Andrew Millison: 00:24:22

of wetland plants to filter water.

Andrew Millison: 00:24:25

If you look at John Todd's stuff and Ocean Arks Institute and eco

Andrew Millison: 00:24:28

machines and living machines, there's like all these crazy examples that

Andrew Millison: 00:24:33

are pretty mind blowing actually of how this has been done at scale.

Carmen Porter: 00:24:38

Wow.

Carmen Porter: 00:24:38

And when you have, say, an anaerobic system are you

Carmen Porter: 00:24:42

putting in the bacteria that, the anaerobic bacteria that you want?

Carmen Porter: 00:24:47

Or are you just encouraging what's already present in the,

Carmen Porter: 00:24:51

in the water that's coming in?

Andrew Millison: 00:24:52

Yeah, that's a really good question.

Andrew Millison: 00:24:54

And I don't specifically know the answer to that cuz I've never like

Andrew Millison: 00:24:57

built the anaerobic part of the system.

Andrew Millison: 00:25:01

It's kinda like a septic tank, like a septic tank basically digests solids

Andrew Millison: 00:25:06

and it's an anaerobic environment.

Andrew Millison: 00:25:08

And I think when you put a septic tank in, you don't

Andrew Millison: 00:25:10

necessarily charge the septic tank.

Andrew Millison: 00:25:12

But I would imagine that if you put in effective microorganisms, different

Andrew Millison: 00:25:18

types to sort of get it going, then that might be like a really good way to do it.

Andrew Millison: 00:25:24

So I don't really know the answer, but I could imagine that it would be beneficial

Andrew Millison: 00:25:27

to sort of charge it with different types of effective microorganisms.

Carmen Porter: 00:25:31

So for the aerobic and for the wetland, say when you're bringing

Carmen Porter: 00:25:34

the plants in, are you dealing with the organisms that are coming in on the

Carmen Porter: 00:25:38

plants, or are you going to be bringing in snails and bringing in fish species

Carmen Porter: 00:25:43

... Andrew Millison: yeah, so we built

Carmen Porter: 00:25:46

the class with John Todd, and we just went and like dug up clumps of

Carmen Porter: 00:25:51

plants from a local wetland area.

Carmen Porter: 00:25:54

And so, I mean, there's lots of organisms that are gonna come in there, and

Carmen Porter: 00:25:58

especially if it's an outdoor system, then you're just naturally gonna have, like

Carmen Porter: 00:26:04

species are gonna find their way in there.

Carmen Porter: 00:26:07

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Millison: 00:26:08

However, I could see also collecting specific

Andrew Millison: 00:26:13

organisms and putting them in there.

Carmen Porter: 00:26:15

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Millison: 00:26:15

Yeah,

Carmen Porter: 00:26:16

How many sort of basins are you dealing with

Carmen Porter: 00:26:19

generally in those sorts of systems?

Andrew Millison: 00:26:22

Well you figure it out by how many days of treatment do

Andrew Millison: 00:26:27

you need for the type of pollution that the specific water sources

Andrew Millison: 00:26:34

that you're putting in there are.

Andrew Millison: 00:26:36

There's actually a video about this called Eco Machine, from when I was

Andrew Millison: 00:26:39

a younger man there, back in Arizona.

Andrew Millison: 00:26:42

You know, what we did was we actually did like a snail test where we took the

Andrew Millison: 00:26:47

water that we were trying to clean up from this old, polluted well, that was

Andrew Millison: 00:26:52

on my property and, um, we saw like, how long does it take to kill a snail?

Andrew Millison: 00:27:00

It's not like a very nice experiment to the snails, but it shows you how

Andrew Millison: 00:27:06

toxic is this water basically.

Andrew Millison: 00:27:08

The water we were dealing with was not very dirty.

Andrew Millison: 00:27:10

I mean, it was, it was not bad.

Andrew Millison: 00:27:13

But basically, you know, what you would find out through testing is how many

Andrew Millison: 00:27:20

days of treatment, how long does the water need to pass through your system

Andrew Millison: 00:27:24

in order to be clean at the other end?

Andrew Millison: 00:27:29

Whatever clean is, whatever metrics you're using, at the other end as far

Andrew Millison: 00:27:33

as how you're gonna use that water.

Andrew Millison: 00:27:35

And then what is the rate that water is flowing through your system?

Andrew Millison: 00:27:39

So it's like if you're using say like 200 gallon totes or something like that as

Andrew Millison: 00:27:44

your units, and you have 200 gallons of water coming into your system per day,

Andrew Millison: 00:27:51

that it's going through one tote per day.

Andrew Millison: 00:27:55

And so if it takes five days of treatment to clean your water, then

Andrew Millison: 00:28:00

you would want five totes, which would total a thousand gallons of capacity.

Andrew Millison: 00:28:05

So that's like the basic metrics of how you figure out how many different tanks

Andrew Millison: 00:28:13

you're gonna move the water through.

Carmen Porter: 00:28:16

And is this system used for gray water as well as black water?

Andrew Millison: 00:28:21

I wouldn't necessarily be like putting black

Andrew Millison: 00:28:23

water in, like open tanks per se.

Andrew Millison: 00:28:26

I mean, Okay.

Andrew Millison: 00:28:28

I've seen it done.

Andrew Millison: 00:28:29

So when I was in India, and I have some of this documented on videos too,

Andrew Millison: 00:28:34

but when I went to Auroville, which is sort of like a eco city located

Andrew Millison: 00:28:39

on the coast of Tamil Nad u in Pondicherry, and it was founded

Andrew Millison: 00:28:43

by Sri Aurobindo like 50 years ago.

Andrew Millison: 00:28:46

It's a very well known place.

Andrew Millison: 00:28:48

And they have like really, really excellent biological water treatment

Andrew Millison: 00:28:52

systems, like living machines, like I'm talking about but they're not

Andrew Millison: 00:28:56

like going through tanks per se.

Andrew Millison: 00:28:58

It's more of like an aesthetic sort of garden.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:01

It's not like what we think of just like, oh, one tank to

Andrew Millison: 00:29:03

the next one tank to the next.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:04

Cuz this is a warm climate, so they don't need any kind of greenhouse

Andrew Millison: 00:29:07

or anything like that and it's like actually this beautiful water garden.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:11

But they actually, you know, first they settle the solids

Andrew Millison: 00:29:14

out in a regular septic tank.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:18

So it's like basically a regular septic tank has anaerobic,

Andrew Millison: 00:29:21

decomposition, anaerobic treatment.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:23

And then they actually moved the water.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:26

They pumped it into this like, crazy vortex machine.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:31

Inside it's just this glass tower, like it's see through and then

Andrew Millison: 00:29:34

they're making this crazy vortex.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:37

It looks like a, like a tornado of water in this vortex.

Andrew Millison: 00:29:41

So they're running it through there and then they're running it into these planted

Andrew Millison: 00:29:46

big sort of water gardens and then they're pumping it up and running it through

Andrew Millison: 00:29:50

flow forms, if you know flow forms?

Andrew Millison: 00:29:53

That takes the water and moves it in this figure eight pattern, oxygenating it and

Andrew Millison: 00:29:57

enlivening it, and then it's flowing back down into this different water garden.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:01

And then at the end they're pumping it out and using it to water their landscape.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:06

So it's not like they all look like tanks per se.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:09

But that's where I saw black water and it didn't smell.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:12

But you know, like in the US I would think , okay, I wouldn't just be putting

Andrew Millison: 00:30:15

black water into this kind of situation.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:18

However, John Todd has lots of examples where he does do black water.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:23

He had the whole town of Harwich, Connecticut.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:26

He had an eco machine, and I'm not sure what came of that.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:30

This is from his historic archives of his projects, where I think they

Andrew Millison: 00:30:34

were treating like 80,000 gallons of black water per day in this system.

Andrew Millison: 00:30:39

So certainly gray water is safer to treat in this type of thing just

Andrew Millison: 00:30:45

because it's less you know, black water's just a more toxic medium.

Carmen Porter: 00:30:50

Certainly.

Carmen Porter: 00:30:51

With the vortex part of that previous system, was that to aerate the water or

Carmen Porter: 00:30:58

what was the purpose of that?

Andrew Millison: 00:31:00

It was aeration, but it was deeper than that.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:03

It was some sort of re patterning.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:04

Oroville actually has a video where they explain their systems a little bit more.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:10

But I gotta tell you, I never actually really understood the physics of

Andrew Millison: 00:31:18

this Vortex machine and how it was actually cleaning the water.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:22

I can't tell you what it was.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:24

What I can tell you is, is that Oroville has been researching this

Andrew Millison: 00:31:28

stuff for 50 years, and if they're using it as a essential part of

Andrew Millison: 00:31:34

their system, then it must have some sort of powerful properties.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:37

But I couldn't tell you exactly how that works.

Carmen Porter: 00:31:39

Hm.

Carmen Porter: 00:31:40

And in some of the later ponds, did they have fish?

Andrew Millison: 00:31:43

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:45

It didn't take long for the water to get where their wetland systems

Andrew Millison: 00:31:50

were very vibrant and alive with lots of diversity of plants and

Andrew Millison: 00:31:55

different organisms and insects and you know, I definitely saw fish.

Andrew Millison: 00:31:59

And of course things like frogs just migrate all amongst the

Andrew Millison: 00:32:02

different tanks and stuff.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:03

Or I wouldn't even call them tanks.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:05

They were more like water gardens.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:06

It was very beautiful.

Carmen Porter: 00:32:07

Are there any other examples of sort of constructed

Carmen Porter: 00:32:10

wetlands that you have observed when you've been traveling around?

Andrew Millison: 00:32:14

I mean, some of the most simple stuff are just reed beds.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:18

And this is the most common thing that you'll see because it's way,

Andrew Millison: 00:32:24

like, there's no moving parts.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:25

You just have a sealed area, like a sealed sort of bed that's filled

Andrew Millison: 00:32:32

with gravel and rock and such that's planted with aquatic plants.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:37

And then the water is moved through that system through the roots of the plants.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:42

But because it's filled with gravel, the water is not exposed to the surface.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:47

And so it just passively moves through this planted reed bed basically

Andrew Millison: 00:32:54

and comes out the other side clean.

Andrew Millison: 00:32:56

It seems way like lower risk to me than some of this other stuff because the

Andrew Millison: 00:33:00

water's not exposed to the surface at all.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:05

Everything's happening subsurface.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:06

And that's more common and more bombproof than some of these more complicated

Andrew Millison: 00:33:11

things that I'm explaining to you.

Carmen Porter: 00:33:12

Hmm.

Carmen Porter: 00:33:13

Another quick question about your travels.

Carmen Porter: 00:33:15

Are there other innovative or inspirational water management

Carmen Porter: 00:33:20

projects that you've witnessed abroad?

Andrew Millison: 00:33:23

Yeah, big time.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:25

A lot of it has to do with harvesting water in the landscape.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:29

Basically rebuilding water tables.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:31

So, I've seen a lot of things in different places, but you know,

Andrew Millison: 00:33:35

India, like what you see in India, the scale of some of the water

Andrew Millison: 00:33:39

harvesting and water table regeneration projects is truly mind blowing.

Carmen Porter: 00:33:46

Your video series on that is fantastic.

Carmen Porter: 00:33:48

I highly recommend checking out that video series.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:51

Thank you.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:51

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:51

It's called India's Water Revolution, and the first two

Andrew Millison: 00:33:54

videos are with the Paani Foundation.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:55

I'm actually going back to India, on December 21st.

Andrew Millison: 00:33:59

I'm gonna stay for two months and I'm going back with the Paani Foundation.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:03

I'm gonna spend four days traveling.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:06

We're gonna go to four different villages there.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:09

The Paani Foundation, basically, it was founded by this Bollywood star, Aamir

Andrew Millison: 00:34:15

Khan, who's like super famous, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:34:18

He's like in America, you'd think of him as like Will Smith or Tom Cruise,

Andrew Millison: 00:34:23

or someone who's just like a superstar who's been in tons and tons of movies.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:27

So this guy's really, really famous, really, really great guy.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:31

Really concerned about social welfare and ecology and everything.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:35

And so, um, they founded this contest between villages where the villages

Andrew Millison: 00:34:42

compete to see who could install the most amount of water harvesting

Andrew Millison: 00:34:47

structures in a 45 day period.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:50

And so from 2016 is when they started this contest, they've had

Andrew Millison: 00:34:55

something like 8,000 villages compete.

Andrew Millison: 00:34:58

And so, I mean, these villages get super into it, and they throw everything

Andrew Millison: 00:35:04

they have, everybody they have into digging contour trenches and infiltration

Andrew Millison: 00:35:12

basins and all these different types of structures throughout their watershed.

Andrew Millison: 00:35:17

Now, you know, the cool thing about villages in India is they're

Andrew Millison: 00:35:20

old, they're ancient villages.

Andrew Millison: 00:35:22

So the village boundaries, the boundaries of their land correspond

Andrew Millison: 00:35:28

to watershed boundaries typically.

Andrew Millison: 00:35:30

So if a village is like, Okay, we're gonna restore our land, they're

Andrew Millison: 00:35:33

actually restoring the watershed basin because naturally they divided

Andrew Millison: 00:35:37

the landscape, management units, village units on the ridges and the

Andrew Millison: 00:35:43

hilltops and everything like that.

Andrew Millison: 00:35:45

Because that's just the sort of common sense way to do it.

Andrew Millison: 00:35:48

So you get these villages of say 2000 people and they throw everything they

Andrew Millison: 00:35:54

have, mostly by hand, although some of 'em also were able to get like

Andrew Millison: 00:35:58

heavy equipment like excavators out there, building retention basins,

Andrew Millison: 00:36:02

contour trenches, ponds, check dams, gabion structures, soakage

Andrew Millison: 00:36:09

pits, you know, like this whole network all throughout the watershed.

Andrew Millison: 00:36:13

45 days.

Andrew Millison: 00:36:14

And then the monsoons come, okay?

Andrew Millison: 00:36:18

And all this rain pours down, it fills up all of their water harvesting

Andrew Millison: 00:36:23

structures and then that very season, the water table regenerates.

Carmen Porter: 00:36:29

Wow.

Andrew Millison: 00:36:30

all the work in 45 days.

Andrew Millison: 00:36:32

And because of the climate there, because in India you have this very long

Andrew Millison: 00:36:35

extended, very dry season, but then you have a short and very wet monsoon season,

Andrew Millison: 00:36:42

literally they built their water tables in one season, their wells came back.

Andrew Millison: 00:36:49

And then wait another year and another year, another year, you know, five

Andrew Millison: 00:36:54

years down the line, there's just like springs popping up everywhere.

Andrew Millison: 00:36:58

The farmers are growing multiple crops in a year instead of one.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:02

People are like building new houses and like fixing the village up.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:06

The prosperity that happens from just this level of

Andrew Millison: 00:37:09

effort is pretty unbelievable.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:12

And when I go back in December, they actually have another

Andrew Millison: 00:37:15

phase to the competition.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:17

Because they had so many villages, they had like at least a thousand villages

Andrew Millison: 00:37:21

that completely fixed their water problem, that basically went from like being water

Andrew Millison: 00:37:25

depleted to being water rich forever, because they changed the very nature of

Andrew Millison: 00:37:29

the hydrology in their watershed basin.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:32

So they've permanently built up their water table that every time it rains,

Andrew Millison: 00:37:36

it just recharges again and again.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:39

And so now it's called the farmer's Cup, where they're seeing which

Andrew Millison: 00:37:44

farmer's group, they formed all these farmer's groups, can actually

Andrew Millison: 00:37:48

do the best organic food production.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:52

And that's what they're competing now.

Andrew Millison: 00:37:54

So it's really like when you look at that scale, you're like, that's the scale we

Andrew Millison: 00:37:59

need in order to fix this planet here.

Carmen Porter: 00:38:03

And can some of these models also apply to city context?

Carmen Porter: 00:38:09

You're not gonna be working the land the same way, but there are water

Carmen Porter: 00:38:12

issues in the cities in a huge way.

Andrew Millison: 00:38:15

yeah, totally.

Andrew Millison: 00:38:16

And you know, cities, I mean, cities are very water shedding

Andrew Millison: 00:38:22

structures, meaning there's like all these roads and impermeable

Andrew Millison: 00:38:26

surfaces, driveways and buildings.

Andrew Millison: 00:38:29

Typically the engineering of a city is that the water is just shunted

Andrew Millison: 00:38:33

from where it falls into whatever the drainage ditch or river bed,

Andrew Millison: 00:38:38

whatever, as quickly as possible.

Andrew Millison: 00:38:40

And so, you know, in a city strategy, you're talking about

Andrew Millison: 00:38:43

many, many, many, many small scale water infiltration structures.

Andrew Millison: 00:38:48

One great example is the work of Brad Lancaster down in Tucson, Arizona doing

Andrew Millison: 00:38:55

streetside water harvesting basins.

Andrew Millison: 00:38:58

So every time it rains, the water from the roads go and pool up in

Andrew Millison: 00:39:02

these basins that are then planted with native food producing trees.

Andrew Millison: 00:39:06

The trees grow up and they provide habitat and shade and helped with the

Andrew Millison: 00:39:10

heat island effect and food as well.

Andrew Millison: 00:39:12

And then the water infiltrates.

Andrew Millison: 00:39:14

I've toured that very extensively with Brad as well at a certain

Andrew Millison: 00:39:18

point all of these small structures added up together, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:39:23

Create this whole matrix of small scale water harvesting structures

Andrew Millison: 00:39:28

in the same way like that the India stuff, you know, all these

Andrew Millison: 00:39:31

little structures added together.

Andrew Millison: 00:39:33

So in cities you can actually restore the subsurface water table

Andrew Millison: 00:39:38

and help to grow , habitat and food producing trees in cities as well.

Andrew Millison: 00:39:43

There's a project I'd like to visit, when I go back to India this

Andrew Millison: 00:39:46

next time in Bangalore where they have these infiltration wells, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:39:52

They call 'em dry wells.

Andrew Millison: 00:39:54

I did do a video about this in Chennai, but not at the scale

Andrew Millison: 00:39:59

that's happening in Bangalore.

Andrew Millison: 00:40:00

But apparently there's this one person or organization that's put in like tens

Andrew Millison: 00:40:05

of thousands of these soakage wells, which are basically like you dig a shaft

Andrew Millison: 00:40:09

down into the ground, you fill it with rock, and you divert runoff into it.

Andrew Millison: 00:40:16

So every time it rains, instead of the runoff shunting away, like I

Andrew Millison: 00:40:20

said, into like dry river beds and such, it soaks into the ground to help

Andrew Millison: 00:40:24

build that subsurface water table.

Andrew Millison: 00:40:26

And we see that also in Portland, Oregon with the Green Streets, they have

Andrew Millison: 00:40:29

all these streetside water harvesting basins there as well all over the

Andrew Millison: 00:40:33

city that are helping to keep the water from just running right into the

Andrew Millison: 00:40:37

Columbia River and the Willamette River.

Andrew Millison: 00:40:39

It cleans the water so the pollution gets filtered through plants or through soil

Andrew Millison: 00:40:44

before it ends up in the water courses.

Andrew Millison: 00:40:46

So yeah, there's lots and lots of examples like that.

Carmen Porter: 00:40:49

And so you've mentioned a couple, but what are

Carmen Porter: 00:40:50

some of the other wetland or water catchment or water filtration projects

Carmen Porter: 00:40:57

that you'd really love to visit?

Andrew Millison: 00:40:59

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:40:59

Let's see.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:00

I've mentioned definitely like some of my favorites for sure.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:03

Uh, okay, well I'll tell you where I'm going when I go to India,

Andrew Millison: 00:41:07

I'm going to actually the things that I really wanna visit, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:41:10

One of them is the work of Dr.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:12

Rajendra Singh in Rajasthan where his organization worked

Andrew Millison: 00:41:18

with villagers to restore their traditional water catchment ponds,

Andrew Millison: 00:41:25

crescent shaped ponds called johads.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:28

And they began to restore these johads in order to bring just

Andrew Millison: 00:41:31

local water supply back for animal husbandry and agriculture.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:36

And they started restoring these, restoring these, building

Andrew Millison: 00:41:39

these johads one after another.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:41

Suddenly, after, I think it was eight years, I need to look back at my notes.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:47

It was five years, eight years, something like that.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:49

The Arvari River actually started flowing again.

Andrew Millison: 00:41:53

After all of these ponds had been put into place, it built up, it slowed

Andrew Millison: 00:41:57

the water moving through the system so much, because previously they were on

Andrew Millison: 00:42:01

like this sort of drought flood cycle where the monsoons would come, gully,

Andrew Millison: 00:42:06

washers, everything, floods the water course, and then boom, all that water

Andrew Millison: 00:42:11

moves through and it's drought again.

Andrew Millison: 00:42:14

But here they slowed the flow, they moderated the flow of the water

Andrew Millison: 00:42:17

through the system, through all these traditional catchment ponds that

Andrew Millison: 00:42:20

were kind of like leaky ponds, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:42:22

And they actually brought back this river to a perennially flowing river

Andrew Millison: 00:42:27

. It had been like dead for at least 50 years, had only been a monsoon,

Andrew Millison: 00:42:32

gushing river and then a drought river.

Andrew Millison: 00:42:35

So that's one that's really an amazing project I'm gonna go visit.

Andrew Millison: 00:42:39

Another project that I'm gonna visit is in a even drier part of

Andrew Millison: 00:42:43

Rajasthan in the area of Jodhpur.

Andrew Millison: 00:42:46

Jodhpur is, It's analogous to like Phoenix, Arizona, but hotter, hotter

Andrew Millison: 00:42:52

and drier for a longer period of time.

Andrew Millison: 00:42:55

But when they do get the monsoons, they can actually get more rainfall.

Andrew Millison: 00:42:58

So it's like 10 months out of the year, it's like scorching dry, incredibly hot.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:05

This is the Thar Desert.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:06

It's the most densely inhabited desert on the planet.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:09

25 million people live in this desert and basically practice subsistence

Andrew Millison: 00:43:13

agriculture there and there's an organization that's been working since

Andrew Millison: 00:43:17

the early eighties called Gravis, Jodhpur.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:20

And I visited this organization back in early 2018, and I'm

Andrew Millison: 00:43:24

going back again this time.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:27

And they have built water harvesting structures.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:32

Really interesting types of structures that sort of merge the traditional

Andrew Millison: 00:43:40

practices there with like more contemporary water harvesting.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:44

So, I don't wanna get too far into the details.

Andrew Millison: 00:43:46

I'll just tell you one example is they have these rock hills around there,

Andrew Millison: 00:43:52

and then people are farming down in the lowland areas, kind of surrounded by

Andrew Millison: 00:43:58

like these rocky outcroppings and stuff.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:00

And so when you get a big monsoon rain on these rocky outcroppings, you get tons

Andrew Millison: 00:44:06

of water rushing off these rocks down into the farm fields, and then it's gone.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:11

So, they built these rock walls at the base of these rocky structures

Andrew Millison: 00:44:16

that are simultaneously creating the boundaries of their farms.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:21

So it's kind of like what we think of as a fence, but they don't really

Andrew Millison: 00:44:22

have like fencing material there.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:24

So they build walls around their farms.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:26

So they build these rock walls, but the rock walls are perpendicular to the slope.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:30

So when the water comes rushing off these rocks, the force is broken by these rock

Andrew Millison: 00:44:35

walls and then it goes, spills through the rock walls, releasing some of its

Andrew Millison: 00:44:40

force, and then they channel it into like contour swales, trenches and stuff where

Andrew Millison: 00:44:47

it's able to infiltrate into the ground.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:49

And then all of their field boundaries as well are like built up berms.

Andrew Millison: 00:44:54

So every field is a water harvesting basin itself.

Andrew Millison: 00:45:01

This is traditional, but this organization came back and kind of

Andrew Millison: 00:45:04

revived these practices and repaired and fixed and sort of came through

Andrew Millison: 00:45:09

with this like design concept of how to treat the total watershed.

Andrew Millison: 00:45:14

And so this is like a super dry area, if you go on Google Earth and you go to

Andrew Millison: 00:45:20

Jodhpur India, which is J O D H P U R, and you look to the west, you can see

Andrew Millison: 00:45:27

this sort of like green haze on the land.

Andrew Millison: 00:45:31

And if you zoom in, all of that, the green that you see

Andrew Millison: 00:45:35

is basically irrigated fields.

Andrew Millison: 00:45:38

There are some ditches coming through there where there's water

Andrew Millison: 00:45:41

being diverted from far off places, so it's not all water harvesting, all

Andrew Millison: 00:45:44

the green you see, but a lot of it is all from water harvesting structure.

Andrew Millison: 00:45:49

My point is these are projects that you can see from space, like that's the scale.

Andrew Millison: 00:45:54

When I was there in 2018, they were saying that their water harvesting projects

Andrew Millison: 00:45:59

included about 1.3 million people, were benefiting from their projects there.

Andrew Millison: 00:46:05

And so this is like small scale projects cumulatively over decades,

Andrew Millison: 00:46:10

over large areas that cumulatively are like building water tables

Andrew Millison: 00:46:16

in whole regions and basically stabilizing the economy, the culture,

Andrew Millison: 00:46:22

the agricultural productivity there.

Carmen Porter: 00:46:25

What I'm curious about though is these projects that are

Carmen Porter: 00:46:29

dramatically changing the land, the water availability, where the water is

Carmen Porter: 00:46:36

when, how is that changing the ecology?

Carmen Porter: 00:46:39

Are they seeing a lot more aquatic animals and amphibians and birds?

Andrew Millison: 00:46:46

Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Millison: 00:46:48

That was one of the things like when I went around with, Dr.

Andrew Millison: 00:46:51

Avinash Pol of the Panni Foundation, and I have this in the videos there.

Andrew Millison: 00:46:54

He took me to this one place and he was just like, Okay, just be quiet.

Andrew Millison: 00:46:58

And we just listened and there's all these bird noises, you know, and

Andrew Millison: 00:47:02

you see these flocks, these different waterfowl and these cranes and flocks

Andrew Millison: 00:47:06

of birds going by and you can hear like the buzzing of frogs and all this stuff.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:12

And there's little things flopping around in the water.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:14

You can see little insects and things like that.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:16

And he's like, none of this was here.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:19

He's like two years ago, three years ago, this wasn't here.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:23

He's like, this is actually bringing back the ecology.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:27

I mean, think about the ecosystem benefits of having a river that

Andrew Millison: 00:47:32

previously would just run during the monsoons and be like a sort of wash out

Andrew Millison: 00:47:37

for the monsoon rains and then go dry versus having perennial water there.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:42

I mean the ecosystem effects are dramatic and you're not even planning for that.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:47

That's just the sort of like side effects.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:51

Those are the side effects of rehydrating a watershed.

Andrew Millison: 00:47:55

Even if you're just doing it for your own, like agricultural food security.

Carmen Porter: 00:48:01

So are they seeing species that they hadn't seen in

Carmen Porter: 00:48:05

a very long time in these areas?

Andrew Millison: 00:48:09

I mean, I didn't get that like sort of

Andrew Millison: 00:48:11

documentation level of detail.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:14

I didn't really hear any stories of like, Oh, this particular

Andrew Millison: 00:48:17

species showed back up.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:18

It's more he was just like, The birds are back, you know?

Andrew Millison: 00:48:22

It's like,

Carmen Porter: 00:48:24

Although I guess in the Mexican project they are

Carmen Porter: 00:48:27

monitoring the biodiversity in the.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:31

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:32

Did you watch that video?

Carmen Porter: 00:48:33

Yeah, I did.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:34

Yeah.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:34

Right.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:34

So the axolotl salamander, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:48:37

Basically the axolotl salamander is a endangered species.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:42

The axolotl salamander is a world renowned amphibian.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:47

I think it's the most widely distributed salamander in the world

Andrew Millison: 00:48:54

or something like that, that people grow in tanks, in like aquariums.

Andrew Millison: 00:48:59

Because it has this incredible regenerating power.

Andrew Millison: 00:49:04

Like you can cut off its limbs, like it grows back, Like it'll grow back, like

Andrew Millison: 00:49:08

its brain, like parts of its brain, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:49:11

In America, people pronounce it axellotle.

Andrew Millison: 00:49:14

So when I was saying axolotl, people don't know what I'm talking about,

Andrew Millison: 00:49:16

but in Mexico, the X is actually pronounce as a s h so like the place

Andrew Millison: 00:49:20

where the axolotl or the axolotl are living is a place called Xochimilco,

Andrew Millison: 00:49:27

but it's spelled x o, like, Xochimilco.

Andrew Millison: 00:49:30

So anyway, that's just a little aside for people that don't know what I'm

Andrew Millison: 00:49:33

talking about when I say axolotl.

Andrew Millison: 00:49:34

But the axolotl salamander, this is its native environment and it's

Andrew Millison: 00:49:39

basically because of the introduction of exotic tilapia and carp for an

Andrew Millison: 00:49:46

attempt by the government at aquaculture food production, the species is

Andrew Millison: 00:49:51

like super threatened down there.

Andrew Millison: 00:49:53

And then also the pollution, like I was saying from the slums that

Andrew Millison: 00:49:57

are moving in on the chinampas.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:00

And so that's where the bio filters are meant to actually create these

Andrew Millison: 00:50:03

little like refuge, where the axolotl salamanders can breed, and survive

Andrew Millison: 00:50:11

protected from their exotic predator fish and the pollutants of the area.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:17

Actually, there's one more.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:18

One more just example that's popping in my head.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:20

I think when you find these indicator species, right?

Andrew Millison: 00:50:23

So the axolotl is an indicator of the success of the chinampas project.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:28

It's an indicator of the ecosystem health.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:31

The same thing, I can't remember what the fish is called, but they

Andrew Millison: 00:50:34

were talking about it in Hawaii.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:36

In the Pacific Northwest we have the salmon and the salmon basically

Andrew Millison: 00:50:40

live their life in the ocean.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:41

They're born on land up in, you know, the mountains.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:44

They swim down the stream, they swim out to the ocean, they live out in the

Andrew Millison: 00:50:48

ocean, they grow and then they swim back up to lay their eggs up, you know, in

Andrew Millison: 00:50:54

these little mountain streams inland.

Andrew Millison: 00:50:56

And they basically sort of like bring this oceanic nutrients back up the ladder.

Andrew Millison: 00:51:03

And then they die up in the mountains and they lay their eggs there.

Andrew Millison: 00:51:06

Well, there's these fish in Hawaii that were traditionally part of their

Andrew Millison: 00:51:10

system that had the opposite, where they would go out to the ocean to

Andrew Millison: 00:51:15

like lay their eggs and breed and then they would come back up and live their

Andrew Millison: 00:51:20

lives in the streams and the lowy patches, like of the Ahupua'a system.

Andrew Millison: 00:51:27

And so like when you find an indicator species like that, these species

Andrew Millison: 00:51:31

are an indicator of an intact system because they have to get all the

Andrew Millison: 00:51:35

way from the ocean all the way up to the taro patches located up there.

Andrew Millison: 00:51:40

And if you find them up there, then you know that there is enough

Andrew Millison: 00:51:42

of a vein of health going on that that system is unbroken.

Andrew Millison: 00:51:45

Just like if you have salmon up in a creek, you're like, Wow,

Andrew Millison: 00:51:48

there's something intact here.

Andrew Millison: 00:51:50

The salmon were able to get all the way to their traditional spawning

Andrew Millison: 00:51:53

location, you know, from the ocean.

Andrew Millison: 00:51:55

So you know, when you can find some sort of indicator species that indicates

Andrew Millison: 00:52:00

the health, it sort of becomes the totem of that particular system.

Andrew Millison: 00:52:04

And it's like this connection, you're like, wow, if we can

Andrew Millison: 00:52:07

bring back this animal here, this creature, then that represents the

Andrew Millison: 00:52:11

health of our whole world really.

Andrew Millison: 00:52:15

So I think that's kind of one way to bring it all together.

Carmen Porter: 00:52:17

Mm-hmm.

Carmen Porter: 00:52:19

I just wanna mention that your videos are incredibly informative and the equipment,

Carmen Porter: 00:52:27

the way that you explain things, the visualization, it's impeccable.

Carmen Porter: 00:52:33

It's really quite fantastic.

Carmen Porter: 00:52:34

How can people find you?

Andrew Millison: 00:52:35

Well, you could certainly see all my videos if you

Andrew Millison: 00:52:38

go on YouTube and Andrew Millison, a n d r e w m i l l i s o n.

Andrew Millison: 00:52:44

My website, is andrewmillison.com has links to all the different things I do.

Andrew Millison: 00:52:48

Also, you know, like I have this whole online course program

Andrew Millison: 00:52:52

through Oregon State University.

Andrew Millison: 00:52:54

We teach permaculture design courses.

Andrew Millison: 00:52:56

We've been doing that since 2011.

Andrew Millison: 00:52:58

So we've basically been developing online courses in permaculture for over a decade.

Andrew Millison: 00:53:03

And so we've gotten fairly sophisticated with it and a lot of the content

Andrew Millison: 00:53:07

I produce is essentially, I'm producing content for my Oregon

Andrew Millison: 00:53:10

State University online courses.

Andrew Millison: 00:53:14

But I put my best stuff out to the public in the vein of just free education cuz

Andrew Millison: 00:53:19

I feel like that's really important.

Andrew Millison: 00:53:20

And you know, if anything we're upping the game right now as

Andrew Millison: 00:53:24

far as I finally have some other people I'm working with now.

Andrew Millison: 00:53:27

I did like everything myself for the longest time.

Andrew Millison: 00:53:30

Now I have some other people helping me with filming and helping me with editing

Andrew Millison: 00:53:35

and of course, Ben Missimer of Pearl River Eco Design, doing the digital

Andrew Millison: 00:53:39

animation of like watershed stuff.

Andrew Millison: 00:53:41

We're kind of pulling out all the stops on this Hawaii video that we're gonna do.

Andrew Millison: 00:53:45

So, I'm hoping to just like actually keep making stuff better because

Andrew Millison: 00:53:53

people, like you're saying, wow, so impactful having the information in

Andrew Millison: 00:53:57

an entertaining and detailed way, can really shift people's potential

Andrew Millison: 00:54:04

to make changes in the real world when they have the right information.

Andrew Millison: 00:54:08

So that's pretty much my mission right now, is to give people high quality

Andrew Millison: 00:54:14

information and storytelling in a sense, in order that they can most effectively

Andrew Millison: 00:54:20

activate themselves to do the work.

Carmen Porter: 00:54:23

Mm.

Carmen Porter: 00:54:24

That's fantastic.

Carmen Porter: 00:54:25

Thank you.

Carmen Porter: 00:54:27

Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Andrew Millison: 00:54:30

The Permaculture Water Summit is gonna be in a week,

Andrew Millison: 00:54:32

which is October 13th through 15th.

Andrew Millison: 00:54:34

But I imagine that, that this won't come out before then.

Andrew Millison: 00:54:37

We basically did about 22 interviews with some of the greatest permaculture

Andrew Millison: 00:54:42

water thinkers on the planet.

Andrew Millison: 00:54:44

We've got some of the people I mentioned here, like Satyajit Bal,

Andrew Millison: 00:54:48

the head of the Paani Foundation, Dr.

Andrew Millison: 00:54:50

Rajendra Singh The Water Man of India, Geoff Lawton, who's one

Andrew Millison: 00:54:53

of the most famous, you know, permaculture guys in the planet.

Andrew Millison: 00:54:56

Rhamis Kent, Natalie Topa, Warren Brush the list goes on this like total

Andrew Millison: 00:55:01

superstars about water and permaculture.

Andrew Millison: 00:55:04

And so even though we're gonna have the summit, coming up, and you're

Andrew Millison: 00:55:07

probably gonna miss it if you're just listening to this now, you will be

Andrew Millison: 00:55:10

able to go and see all the recordings.

Andrew Millison: 00:55:13

We're gonna keep them up for free and perpetuity and that

Andrew Millison: 00:55:16

is Permaculture summit.online.

Andrew Millison: 00:55:20

So that's gonna be a nice collection of long, you know, of talks.

Andrew Millison: 00:55:25

If you wanna like spend like 30 hours thinking about permaculture

Andrew Millison: 00:55:30

water, this will be good for you.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:32

That's amazing.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:33

I'll put all the links in the show notes.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:35

Well, thank you very much for joining me.

Andrew Millison: 00:55:37

You're

Andrew Millison: 00:55:37

welcome.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:38

really appreciated it.

Andrew Millison: 00:55:40

My pleasure.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:41

As mentioned, the links are in the show notes.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:45

Thank you for your patience.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:46

The dust has finally begun to settle, so more episodes, greenhouse blog posts,

Carmen Porter: 00:55:52

workshops, and music are coming soon.

Carmen Porter: 00:55:55

If you wanna stay informed, head over to carmen porter.com

Carmen Porter: 00:55:59

and join my mailing list.

Carmen Porter: 00:56:00

Many thanks to all who have taken the time to reach out.

Carmen Porter: 00:56:04

It's always lovely to connect with like-minded folk.