The Casual Vegan

After a few days of rain, I decided to get out into the sun and spend some time at the local wastewater management facility. In fact, I wasn’t alone — Arcata denizens of all kinds enjoy getting outside and spending time at the local sewage facility. No joke! Let me illustrate this a little bit better for you:

This is our local sewer facility! Located at the southern edge of town on the coast of the Humboldt Bay, the Arcata Marsh serves as a wastewater management facility, a bird and wildlife sanctuary, and a recreational spot for tourists and locals. Friends of the Arcata Marsh, aka FOAM, describes the facility in a tidy paragraph:

The wastewater treatment plant handles all sewage for the City of Arcata. Raw sewage enters the headworks, where the sludge is separated from the effluent. The sludge is digested, dried, and composted for use on city grounds. The clarified wastewater is sent to the 49 acres of oxidation ponds where time, aquatic plants, and microorganisms purify it. Arcata’s wastewater then circulates through a six-marsh system, filled with plants and animals that feed on the nutrients that are left. The water that is finally discharged into Humboldt Bay has gone through “enhanced” secondary treatment, thanks to the marsh system, and is completely potable.

Someone on Wikipedia added, “Despite being effectively a sewer, the series of open-air lakes do not smell…” And with the normal strong ocean breeze coming off the bay, it’s true. The marsh rarely smells. The water in the marshes, like FOAM says, is water that has been separated from the most potent smells, and what’s left, at worst, on an unusually still and warm day, is an earthy tone to the air, much like any marsh, that is worlds less offensive in my opinion than the car pollution I have to breathe everyday!

There is a lot of local history to be talked about here at the marsh: the tragedy of the local Wiyot population, the site of one of the earliest railroads in the state (which is no longer in use), the ruins of the Arcata Wharf, the former site to lumber mills and a landfill, and the more recent development of the restoration of marshland (once natural, now artificially restored). It’s a place with ghosts of massacres and fires and Chinese immigrant labor and a much more bustling bay than exists today. But less poignantly, it’s now a great place for a walk or a run, for picking blackberries in late summer, and a wonderfully ecologically-sound way to treat our sewage water. Hats off to its founders!

Click continue reading for more photos:

The birds there are relaxed in a natural environment. I enjoyed watching this vulture skim one of the marshes, riding out the wind current rather majestically, as they do.

Bird tracks in a marsh?

Using the binoculars on one of the trails to get a closer look at an egret.

One of the nicest (and windiest) parts of the Arcata Marsh is the very edge, where it opens up to the Humboldt Bay on an embankment. You can see our neighboring towns, six miles south, and the light in all weather phenomena, sunsets, storms, and fog, is grandiose between the water and the big sky.

Despite having to ride a couple of miles home in a very strong head wind, I had a nice field trip and just thought I’d share a bit of it!

Related:

• Arcata CSA – Deep Seeded Farm
• Farmers Market Report: Arcata, CA
• The Arcata Bike Rally & a tale of bicycle traffic laws
• Sunday Breakfast – Vegan Whole Wheat Blueberry Pancakes

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