Fishing - Fly Fisher=Enviornmentalist......right?

"Sprattoo" wrote in message
...
On Dec 3, 2:04 pm, "Wolfgang" wrote:
O.k., we'd all like to bust up a big dam or shut down a mine or a power
plant or drop a dime on a major polluter or a big time poacher......but,
for
most of us, that just ain't gonna happen. So, what's a boy to do to help
save the planet? Well, how about resting on the bank and keeping an eye
on
your favorite stream.......for a long, long time? :)

http://tinyurl.com/2fmdej

Wolfgang
yeah, it ain't football.......so, sue me.

Here in Maine they used to have a problem with this method of burial.
Our substrate below the basic dirt level was a lot of granite, shale
and what not. The run-off from cemetaries would infect ground water.

Technically, it's not run-off that's contaminating ground water.....pretty
much by definition. But that's a niggling detail. Assuming that water
percolating through a cemetary is contaminating ground water, several things
come immediately to mind; 1. The amount or degree of contamination must be
more or less directly proportional to the number of corpses interred.
Spread them out.....simply do away with enormous graveyards housing the
remains of thousands, or tens of thousands, of people. 2. Modern burial
vaults do not eliminate the problem of decomposition products getting into
the surrounding enivorment. They merely slow the process, thereby reducing
the rate of contamination but also prolonging the duration. 3. Enbalming
does not prevent decomposition......it is simply a delaying tactic.
Meanwhile, burial vaults leak, and formaldehyde (in it's various forms) is a
powerful toxin in its own right. To be sure, it is highly unstable when
unbound and will quickly decompose into harmless by-products, but this is
not so when bound to organic substances.....like human flesh.

Seems to me that the best solution is to bury corpses in places where
decomposition products have plenty of time to filter through whatever
substrate is available, be careful about choosing suitable substrates,
spread the burials out as widely as possible consistent with other
considerations, ensure that the whole process consumes as few resources as
necessary and, insofar as possible, eliminate superfluous toxic substances
from the process.

Also when pine boxes collapsed it would expose the grave, box remnants
and occasionally the orpse.

Sounds to me like all the earmarks of a too shallow grave. Assuming a hole
six feet in depth and a box twelve inches in height (few bodies would need
much more than that) the worst that could happen in a collapse is a few
inches deep depression at the surface (and that's assuming that the corpse
has decomposed to the point where the box no longer contains anything but
air....well, or something resembling air, anyway).

I tried to find an old article on it, but
I didn't come up with much. I spend a big part of my childhood across
the street from a graveyard.
Lake Sebago feeds a very large portion of Southern Maine for water,
and it has many tributaries. The EPA was getting quite specific about
burial laws as I remember some time a go, and even more so for those
anywhere near a water way.

Well, the reference to burial near a favorite trout stream was a bit of
hyperbole which, I admit, I inserted just to **** off all the sports' fans
who get their undies in a twist whenever someone mentions anything having to
do with water around here. :)

That said, it is nevertheless true that, many places in the U.S. (and,
presumably, elsewhere as well), while blessed with cold water fisheries, are
nevertheless hindered from attaining optimal trout population and sizes by
low fertility. Burials at the heads of many of these watersheds would be
bound to have a salubrious affect.

Either way, I'm going for creamation. Half to be buried where I grew
up, the other half to be spread out in Saco bay (two of my favorite
fishing spots).

It takes a lot of fire to burn a corpse. It takes a lot more to burn it
cleanly......eliminate ickly smells and reduce particulate emmissions. All
that burning produces a lot of carbon dioxide.....as well as consuming a
whole bunch of precious fossil fuel. Decompostion in the ground sequesters
a whole bunch of the carbon that is otherwise released via combustion. It
may not seem like a big deal where a single body is concerned, but think
big; six and a half billion human bodies is one hell of a carbon sink!
Moreover, humans are an easily an infinitely renewable resource......we can
always make more of them to capture and hold more carbon.

I remember some time ago though the plastic coffin containers turning
up, some where in California I believe after a mudslide unearthed a
bunch of caskets.

The importance and interest level of this datum depends to a great extent, I
think, on where those containers started from. If it was.....say, Camden or
Juneau.....you have my undivided attention.

The "Green Option" would probably work pretty good
for a small lot, but i wonder how it would work with something like
1,000 or more bodies in the ground. Thats a lot of rotting flesh.

Fortunately, the ground work (so to speak) on this question has already been
done. The Germans, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, Americans, Cambodians,
Poles and a few more all have vast experience in modern times, and numerous
others have been conducting field trials for centuries. Expand the corps a
bit, and we have several millennia worth of more or less rigorous tests to
choose from.

Although there would probably be a big problem with fisherman digging
worms everywhere!

It isn't the digging so much that is the problem as it is leaving all those
****ing paper cartons and beer cans all over the place. :(

Wolfgang