Earth repair: a grassroots guide to healing toxic and damaged landscapes

338 Pages·2015·6.9 MB·English

by  Darwish, Leila

US/Can $22.95 EnVIROnMEnT
GRASSROOTS BIOREMEDIATION TECHNIQUES TO HEAL THE EARTH
…In the energy descent future, many more people will be growing food on
contaminated land; out of necessity. Earth Repair offers the hope that this can be
done without fear of further eroding health and well being.
David Holmgren, author of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
…a book for people who will not wait around to heal the world.
Mark Lakeman, co-founder of The City Repair Project, communitecture,
and the Planet Repair Institute
From urban lots contaminated with heavy metals and chemicals to polluted waterways
and devastating oil spills, our toxic industrial legacy impacts our environment, our health,
and our ability to create healthy, thriving local foodsheds. Conventional clean-up techniques
employed by government and industry are expensive and resource-intensive and can cause
further damage to the ecosystem. As the incidence of contamination and pollution continues
to spread, communities are increasingly unable to rely on those who created the problems to
step in and provide effective solutions that work for people and the planet.
Earth Repair explores a host of powerful grassroots bioremediation techniques that work
with the many microorganisms, mushrooms, and plants that are the planet’s finest and oldest
disaster responders, alchemists, and healers. These techniques include:
• Microbial remediation – using microorganisms to break down and bind contaminants
• Phytoremediation – using plants to extract, bind and transform toxins
• Mycoremediation – using fungi to clean up contaminated soil and water.
Packed with valuable firsthand information from visionaries in the field, Earth Repair is essential
reading that will empower communities and individuals with tools to transform environmental
despair into constructive action.
… an indispensable guide for citizen scientists, permaculturists and ecological
justice activists wanting to proactively address the legacy of environmental pollution
we’ve inherited from our industrial civilization.
Scott Kellogg, educational director of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center
and author of Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide
LEILA DARwISH is a community organizer, urban gardener and permaculture rabble rouser, with a
deep commitment to environmental justice, food security, and providing accessible and transformative
tools for communities struggling with toxic contamination of their land and drinking water.
www.newsociety.com
Praise for
Earth Repair
The real and imagined consequences of contaminated soil and water
have been some of the greatest impediments to restoration of urban
wastelands for food production. Leila Darwish combines the expe-
rience of the pioneer activists and innovators with the expertise and
knowledge of remediation professionals to create an empowering guide
for the large numbers of citizens looking for guidance on this issue. 
Earth Repair includes enough technical detail and explanation to
get most readers up to speed on the subject. The case studies provide
empowering examples of how low cost remediation techniques that
reflect permaculture design principles can be used to enhance com-
munity resilience and advance social justice.
In the energy descent future, many more people will be growing
food on contaminated land; out of necessity! Earth Repair offers the
hope that this can be done without fear of further eroding health and
well being.
—David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture and author,
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
Earth Repair, what a brilliant and useful book! Leila Darwish & New
Society have brought forth a book for people who will not wait around
to heal the world. With a broad and deep view of the historical dynam-
ics of thoughtless upheaval and waste, Earth Repair provides thorough,
local-action strategies that communities, with or without resources,
can undertake to remediate their damaged landscapes. In accessible
language, this book explains how to deal with a serious local issue
while also shining light on where to go to deal with the source! 
—Mark Lakeman, cofounder, The City Repair Project,
communitecture, and the Planet Repair Institute
Earth Repair is a fantastic introduction to grassroots bioremediation
— an indispensible guide for citizen scientists, permaculturists, and
ecological justice activists wanting to proactively address the legacy of
environmental pollution which we’ve inherited from our industrial civ-
ilization. Within is a highly accessible toolkit of techniques and skills
usable by the average person, empowering them to safely destroy or im-
mobilize common contaminants by partnering with familiar biological
allies such as microbes, worms, fungi, and plants. As we transition into
a sustainable society, this book will be a key text, critical for informing
communities in the process of de-toxifying our planet.
—Scott Kellogg, educational director of the
Radix Ecological Sustainability Center and author,
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living – A Do-It-Ourselves Guide.
We are an odd, almost unique, creature that soils its own nest. As we’ve
become more industrially and technologically muscular, our soiling
has penetrated into the heart of Earth’s systems, where we now pile
our filth upon genetics, delicate geochemical balances, and climate. We
have destabilized nature, and we won’t find a way out the same way
we came in. Darwish’s good news is that nature WANTS to heal, and
even knows how. We just have to use the tools she gives us.
—Albert Bates, author, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and
Biochar: Carbon Farming and Climate Change

Copyright © 2013 by Leila Darwish.
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Diane McIntosh.
Image © iStock (contour99)
Printed in Canada. First printing April 2013.
New Society Publishers acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP)
for our publishing activities.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-86571-729-9
eISBN: 978-1-55092-529-6
Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Earth Repair
should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.
To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America)
1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com
Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:
New Society Publishers
P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada
[phone]
New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental
ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the
least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We
are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The inte-
rior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council®-registered
acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free),
processed chlorine free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with cov-
ers produced using FSC®-registered stock. New Society also works to reduce its
carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a
carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books
and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Darwish, Leila
Earth repair : a grassroots guide to healing toxic and damaged landscapes /
Leila Darwish.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-86571-729-9
1. Bioremediation. I. Title.
TD192.5.D37 2013 628.5 C2013-901886-7
Contents
Many Thanks ....................................................................................vii
Introduction: Manualfesto ..............................................................1
Chapter 1: Roots of Repair: Decolonization and
Environmental Justice .................................................3
Chapter 2: Earth Repair and Grassroots Bioremediation ......... 7
Chapter 3: Getting Started ..........................................................23
Chapter 4: Microbial Remediation .............................................35
Chapter 5: Phytoremediation ......................................................69
Chapter 6: Mycoremediation .....................................................123
Chapter 7: The Art of Healing Water ......................................187
Chapter 8: Oil Spills I: The Anatomy of an
Environmental Disaster ......................................... 201
Chapter 9: Oil Spills II: Tools for the Grassroots
Bioremediator.......................................................... 217
Chapter 10: Nuclear Energy and Remediating Radiation ....... 249
Chapter 11: Self-Care for Grassroots Remediators, Community
Members and Disaster Responders ..................... 255
v
vi Earth Repair
Conclusion: Final Words for a Fertile Way Forward ................ 279
Appendix 1: Contaminants 101 .................................................. 281
Appendix 2: Conventional Remediation Techniques ............... 292
Appendix 3: Metric Conversion Table ........................................ 301
Endnotes ......................................................................................... 302
Index ................................................................................................. 315
About the Author ....................................................................... 327
Many Thanks
To my mother, my father, my sister and my friends: Thank
you for your incredibly generous support, powerful inspiration
and love.
To the visionaries, activists, healers and earth workers who took
precious time out of their busy lives to share their knowledge with
me for this book: The gift of your expertise, stories, inspiration and
cautionary tales form the basis Earth Repair. Thank you Starhawk,
Ja Schindler, Peter McCoy, Scott Kellogg, Paul Stamets, Kaja Kühl,
Heather Hendrie, Marika Smith, David Holmgren, Anita Burke, Mia
Rose Maltz, Robert Rawson, Scott Koch, Freeda Burnstad, Nance
Klehm, Jodi Peters, Ferdinand Von Druska, Andrew Butcher, Mark
Lakeman, Oliver Kelhammer, Matt Feinstein, Asa Needle, Adam
Huggins, Carol Bilson, Jay Rosenberg, Scott Kloos, Elaine Ingham,
Guido Mase, Leah Wolfe, Kate O’Brien, and Paul Horsman.
To this living Earth and its wild ones: Thank you for the nourish-
ment, inspiration and sanctuary you have offered me and all those I
love. Your resilience and generosity never cease to amaze me.

vii

Introduction: Manualfesto

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of
ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
— Rumi
From the contaminated soil in backyards, community gar-
dens and vacant urban lots to brownfields, big oil spills and nuclear
accidents, how can we transform toxic and damaged landscapes into
thriving, nourishing and fertile places once more? How can we respond
to environmental disasters in radical, accessible and community-em-
powering ways?
Earth Repair is a grassroots tool kit. It explores some of the
vision ary and practical tools for healing and regenerating damaged eco-
systems — and the powerful and fertile work of reclaiming resilience
and hope in our communities. It is an introduction to the dynamic and
evolving field of earth repair and grassroots bioremediation. The ideas
explored in this book seek to empower and support the work many of
us do everyday to grow healthy food and medicine amidst the polluted
and damaged soils of our backyard gardens, community commons and
wild lands. Earth Repair also seeks to support the efforts of emergency
first responders, community members and grassroots bioremediators
on the front line of oil spills and other industrial accidents whose toxic
legacies lay siege to our health and the health of the lands that sustain
us.
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