amoebashephard

amoebashephard OP t1_je1lgj0 wrote

here's the paper I've been basing the idea of using it as a feedstock for pellets. Both giant and regular knotweed is present in VT.

The thought is to have a solar/bio gas drying facility; and that I would go through the permit process to transport from pickup spots around the state, or that people could schedule pickup.

My hope was to have some sort of system in place to harvest from stream sides legally.

I'm mostly just brainstorming at the moment, and I really appreciate your response!

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amoebashephard OP t1_je0pa64 wrote

I'd be looking at buying during two parts of the season- spring/early summer and then before fall;

Initial cutting would get a higher price with squash planting, and I would handle drying/processing in order to get the right moisture content.

Edit: removal at certain points depletes the rhizome and allows for better suppression

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amoebashephard t1_jdi5brb wrote

I think part of the "under building" numbers are counting housing that is substandard. I don't have the article or numbers ATM, but I believe there is a significant portion of elderly in Vermont living in dangerous and substandard housing that isn't always captured in these housing numbers.

Edit: 7k houses substandard living conditions VT digger 2020

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amoebashephard t1_jdh82dc wrote

UVM tried to do this five or six years ago, the buildings were costing quite a bit for upkeep and they wanted to sell them off to a private rental agency, mostly to aquire the matching money for a large donation to build a new arena.

Luckily, CHT was able to put an offer in. Existing students weren't just evicted, they were allowed to stay, option was given to purchase their unit, and if they wanted to transfer they were given priority in other CHT housing.

This sounds exactly like what happened there. There's tons of articles. I would contact the journalists who wrote those and get them to help you dig, then see if you can get a similar resolution, because when it comes down to it, they've likely already decided to sell it, best outcome is to get a nonprofit in that expands your options.

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amoebashephard t1_jd3g2ee wrote

I was just thinking about this again, and a comment I read earlier from someone about how they thought we could bring jobs to Vermont -they were mostly thinking along the lines of resource extraction.

Resource extraction is one of the biggest source points for pollution, whether it's logging, mining, etc through groundwater.

As illustrated by this question, lots of people are on well water, and there are several areas that already have really bad health issues due to well water-I'm mostly thinking Bridport, Orwell area, and then south to Yankee and then the pfa thing. We've already got a ton of water quality issues, we really need to be careful as a state how we build our economy so that we can actually survive here without getting sick

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amoebashephard t1_jcjwcyj wrote

I know this is slightly off topic, but decriminalization of psychedelic mushrooms would enable some additional environmental remediation efforts around farms.

Currently we're only able to conduct research on the ability of certain mushrooms to uptake nutrients with spores and aren't able to propagate. We know that they are really amazing at dealing with phosphorus, and that they are really good at accumulating heavy metals.

Drug laws have additional effects beyond just people using drugs

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