The Southern Utes are one of the few tribes that manage their energy resources to benefit themselves. They even have an oil company, Red Willow Offshore, that won a lease in the Gulf of Mexico about a month before the Deepwater Horizon well blew up.

American Indians got the reservations they got, to paraphrase Loyd in Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, because the land looked like a piece of shit. Then it turned out that many reservations had rich deposits of oil, natural gas, uranium, and other minerals. Companies that wanted to mine these lands made arrangements with the Department of the Interior. The tribes “approved” the arrangements, but most of the time their leaders didn’t have enough expertise to press for contracts that paid the tribes what they deserved.

The Southern Utes found the expertise, took control of the resources underneath their lands, and have used the money to strengthen their community. That part of it I like.

But I wish they weren’t drilling for oil in the Gulf. I know my wish is naive and unfair: Why shouldn’t Indians profit as whites have profited?

Then again, I wish nobody was drilling for oil in the ocean. I wish we would all make a collective effort to turn away from extracting energy and start producing it from solar or wind or methane from landfills.

Anyway, the Denver Post article provides a succinct description of Southern Ute efforts to become energy self-sufficient. It’s a good, short history lesson.

Source: “Practical Sovereignty: Southern Ute, Inc.,” Jonathan Thompson, High Country News, published in the Denver Post on September 12, 2010

Years ago I forwarded an article from Audubon magazine to Eric Lombardi, executive director of Eco-Cycle in Boulder, because I thought he would be interested in hearing about a landfill being reclaimed (I think it was on Martha’s Vineyard). It was considered to be an easy reclamation project because the landfill contained no toxic materials.

Now comes Advanced Plasma Power, a British company, which has a contract to reclaim the contents of a Belgian landfill, recycle what can be recycled, and convert the methane produced by the decomposition of the remaining products into energy. The project will be operational in 2014 and will last for 30 years.

I love it. It’s my dream that rising prices for electronic parts and glass and metals will make it profitable to get the goods from landfills. And Tim Webb, the author of my source article in the Guardian, seems to agree:

The idea of digging up old rubbish is not new. The chief executive of one British landfill operator told the Guardian he had considered it 15 years ago. But the increasing shortage of landfill space, a need to produce more electricity renewably and higher metal prices are now combining to make firms consider it more seriously.

According to the article, the idea is taking off in Europe because of a shortage of landfill space. The United States probably has more room for landfills than Europe, but nobody wants them around. NIMBYism could make these kinds of projects possible.

Of course, removing items from a landfill is not without problems. The trash may include toxic materials such as asbestos, and methane can explode.

Yet another reason to recycle everything.

Source: “Why Landfill Mining Could Be the Next Big Thing,” Tim Webb, Guardian, October 11, 2010

Coverings, Etc., recovers aluminum from old aircraft fuselages and makes it into tiles. The company calls it Bio-Luminum. Check out the website for all their products.

Jetson Green blog has a list of easy ways to go solar, including Solar in a Box. Sounds good to me.

And, last but not least (or maybe least), TINY HOUSES. 84 square feet? Yikes.

Actually, this is not a post about sewage. It’s a post about turning trash into energy, as in Back to the Future III, when Doc comes back and starts dumpster diving to power his spaceship.

As in biorefineries.

Some were built in California decades ago, but now the news is about biorefineries in Canada (Edmonton) and Europe.

Here’s what I want to know.

Is anyone out there taking noxious weeds and turning them into biofuel?

Now THAT would create an economy that restores…or at least one that weeds.

Sources: “Greenest State Behind the Waste-to-Energy Race,” Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press, September 5, 2010; “Weekly Greens—Sept. 3,” Biofriendly Blog: see number 4

If you’re renovating a bathroom or other space that needs water-resistant/waterproof walls, PolyWall may be of interest to you.

It is a waterproof sheet made from recycled plastic resins that is 1/16 of an inch thick and can be glued to unfinished walls. Parkland Performance Walls and Ceilings recommends that it be installed with latex adhesive over a porous surface, but it may be possible to install PolyWall over ceramic tile and other nonporous surfaces. The website gives different instructions in the FAQ than it does on this Plas-Tex PolyWall page.

Go to the website and check out all the evils PolyWall claims to be “proof” against: termites and acid are two of them.

How Is This Restoration?

Anything that gets plastic out of the environment is a form of restoration in my book. If this limits the amount of new tile we need, or limits the amount of plastic bathtub liners we need, then it will limit the pollution caused by production and it may limit the need to extract oil and clay.

Just discovered a new restoration company: EcoBlu River, Stream, and Wetland Renewal. Check them out.

Check out the new page listing websites where you can search for green jobs.

I’ve also included organizations that provide training and networking.

Jill Nokes is a landscape designer living in Austin, Texas, who provides

management plans and consulting services to owners of rural property who desire to become better stewards of their land and to improve the overall ecological health of their property.  In recent years, [she has been] collaborating with … experts including ornithologists, geologists, agronomists, contractors and range specialists to address the particular needs of each project.

What struck me about her site was the thoroughness of the services offered, from ecological assessments of land to improvements to its hydrological function.

My favorite example of her work was the Native Grassland and Wildflower Meadow Restoration, since I tried to do something similar in my own yard.

Hui Kū Maoli Ola began as a project of two college students in Hawaii who wanted to plant some native species in their parents’ yards. Because most nurseries didn’t sell native plants in the mid-1990s, they began harvesting seeds from local natural areas and then growing the plants themselves. They ended up with too many plants for their purposes and tried selling them from the back of a truck. After a couple of good truck sales, they established their own business on a small scale. Then came a conversation at a sushi restaurant with the executive buyer for Home Depot Hawaii, and things really took off.

There’s a lot about the importance of native plants to Hawaiian culture in this article: “Alumni Growing Native Hawaiian Plants,” by Brendan Sagara, Malamalama: The Magazine of the University of Hawaii, April 2010

I found an edifying post about the differences between reclamation and restoration on the blog for an Idaho company specializing in restoration with native plants (see the entry for March 9, 2010). There’s also a discussion about starting an unconventional business and how it’s easy to get sidetracked by all the free advice from strangers.

Conservation Seeding and Restoration is about seven years old and is “dedicated to restoring properly functioning, sustainable native habitats.” CSR does everything from project design to genome-specific seed collection and plant propagation to noxious weed eradication to nonlethal wildlife control. In other words, you’re not going to find this wide a variety of restoration services at too many other companies.

Source: “Restoration—Reclamation,” Captain’s Chair, Conservation Seeding and Restoration Inc. Blog, March 9, 2010