Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
• Draining a marsh is a very different process from restoring life to a
drained marsh.
Designing, constructing, and maintaining a new building are very different
processes from renovating, restoring, and/or adaptively reusing an old build-
ing, especially if it has features of historic significance or artistic beauty.
Designing, constructing, and maintaining a new bridge or a new concrete
sewer system are very different processes from restoring an old stone or
steel bridge, and very different from renovating, redesigning, or relining a
century-old brick sewer system.
Pumping water out of a fossil aquifer and polluting what remains in the
aquifer are very different processes from restoring the quantity and quality
of water in an aquifer.
Depleting fossil topsoil via tilling and overuse—while killing soil commu-
nities via herbicides, pesticides, and artificial fertilizers—is a very different
farming process from the kind that increases the quantity and quality of
topsoil with each agricultural cycle.
Clearcutting an old-growth forest, strip mining a mineral deposit, and con-
taminating a property with industrial waste are very different processes
from restoring a natural forest (not to be confused with the monoculture
tree farms that we often call “forests”), from restoring a mining site to
a healthy ecosystem, and from remediating and redeveloping a toxic old
industrial site into a vibrant neighborhood.
FROM PIONEERS TO LONG-TERM RESIDENTS
The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which
it must turn over to the next generation increased  … in value.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 speech entitled “The New Nationalism”
(emphasis added)
Restoring our world is a very different economic model from basing our wealth on
plundering fossil resources and developing new communities. Thus, it's obvious that
switching to an economy that leaves the world better than we found it is going to
require a thorough overhaul of our higher education, our professional associations,
our industries, our nonprofits, our sciences, our research agendas, our government
policies, our community development models, and—above all—our expectations.
This isn't a shift that requires excessive force. After all, restoration is a natural part
of the lifecycle of everything, living or built (see chapter 1). Everything gets to a
point where maintenance no longer suffices, where it needs redesign, replacement,
or regeneration.
This is bad news for those who want to keep operating in the old “pioneer” model,
which equates economic growth with the conquering of new lands and the extraction
of virgin resources. Over the past fifteen years or so, we've raised our expectations.
Now, we're no longer satisfied to reduce the rate of despoilment; we want to actually
reduce the immense global inventory of despoiled lands, damaged resources, and
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