Leila Darwish - Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes

Praise for

Earth Repair

The real and imagined consequences of contaminated soil and water have been some of the greatest impediments to restoration of urban wastelands for food production. Leila Darwish combines the experience of the pioneer activists and innovators with the expertise and knowledge of remediation professionals to create an empowering guide for the large numbers of citizens looking for guidance on this issue.

Earth Repair includes enough technical detail and explanation to get most readers up to speed on the subject. The case studies provide empowering examples of how low cost remediation techniques that reflect permaculture design principles can be used to enhance community resilience and advance social justice.

In the energy descent future, many more people will be growing food on contaminated land; out of necessity! Earth Repair offers the hope that this can be done without fear of further eroding health and well being.

David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture and author, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability

Earth Repair, what a brilliant and useful book! Leila Darwish & New Society have brought forth a book for people who will not wait around to heal the world. With a broad and deep view of the historical dynamics of thoughtless upheaval and waste, Earth Repair provides thorough, local-action strategies that communities, with or without resources, can undertake to remediate their damaged landscapes. In accessible language, this book explains how to deal with a serious local issue while also shining light on where to go to deal with the source!

Mark Lakeman, cofounder, The City Repair Project, communitecture, and the Planet Repair Institute

Earth Repair is a fantastic introduction to grassroots bioremediation an indispensible guide for citizen scientists, permaculturists, and ecological justice activists wanting to proactively address the legacy of environmental pollution which weve inherited from our industrial civilization. Within is a highly accessible toolkit of techniques and skills usable by the average person, empowering them to safely destroy or immobilize common contaminants by partnering with familiar biological allies such as microbes, worms, fungi, and plants. As we transition into a sustainable society, this book will be a key text, critical for informing communities in the process of de-toxifying our planet.

Scott Kellogg, educational director of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center and author, Toolbox for Sustainable City Living A Do-It-Ourselves Guide.

We are an odd, almost unique, creature that soils its own nest. As weve become more industrially and technologically muscular, our soiling has penetrated into the heart of Earths systems, where we now pile our filth upon genetics, delicate geochemical balances, and climate. We have destabilized nature, and we wont find a way out the same way we came in. Darwishs good news is that nature WANTS to heal, and even knows how. We just have to use the tools she gives us.

Albert Bates, author, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Biochar: Carbon Farming and Climate Change

Copyright 2013 by Leila Darwish.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Image iStock (contour99)

First printing April 2013.

New Society Publishers acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-86571-729-9

eISBN: 978-1-55092-529-6

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Earth Repair should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.

To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America)
1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

New Society Publishers

P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada

(250) 247-9737

New Society Publishers mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The interior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council-registered acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free), processed chlorine free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with covers produced using FSC-registered stock. New Society also works to reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Darwish, Leila

Earth repair : a grassroots guide to healing toxic and damaged landscapes / Leila Darwish.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-86571-729-9

1. Bioremediation. I. Title.

TD192.5.D37 2013 628.5 C2013-901886-7

Contents

T O MY MOTHER, MY FATHER, MY SISTER AND MY FRIENDS: Thank you for your incredibly generous support, powerful inspiration and love.

To the visionaries, activists, healers and earth workers who took precious time out of their busy lives to share their knowledge with me for this book: The gift of your expertise, stories, inspiration and cautionary tales form the basis Earth Repair. Thank you Starhawk, Ja Schindler, Peter McCoy, Scott Kellogg, Paul Stamets, Kaja Khl, Heather Hendrie, Marika Smith, David Holmgren, Anita Burke, Mia Rose Maltz, Robert Rawson, Scott Koch, Freeda Burnstad, Nance Klehm, Jodi Peters, Ferdinand Von Druska, Andrew Butcher, Mark Lakeman, Oliver Kelhammer, Matt Feinstein, Asa Needle, Adam Huggins, Carol Bilson, Jay Rosenberg, Scott Kloos, Elaine Ingham, Guido Mase, Leah Wolfe, Kate OBrien, and Paul Horsman.

To this living Earth and its wild ones: Thank you for the nourishment, inspiration and sanctuary you have offered me and all those I love. Your resilience and generosity never cease to amaze me.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

F ROM THE CONTAMINATED SOIL IN BACKYARDS, community gardens and vacant urban lots to brownfields, big oil spills and nuclear accidents, how can we transform toxic and damaged landscapes into thriving, nourishing and fertile places once more? How can we respond to environmental disasters in radical, accessible and community-empowering ways?