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BioHaven Design Basics...What Do You Need To Know In Advance Before Ordering The Right BioHaven?  The BioHaven Solution Process!

7/12/2021

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Start with the premise that natural systems are fully capable of fixing your water.

Above these fish swimming around under a floating islands are a few mounds of something grey. It is actually freshwater sponge, the found its way there naturally.
It's amazing how nature will support our efforts with an array of surprises, such as freshwater sponge growing under this floating dock, contributing to water filtration.
​Today’s water managers, both private and public, have an expanding range of tools to steer their water towards health.  As CEO of a company that has developed one particular tool, BioHavens, I am frequently in conversations with water stewards about the important details they must consider in order to get it right.  So, here’s a list that is likely to include information that relates to the issues you face.  It is a window.  It will get you started towards chemical-free, sustainable management of your water:

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NanoHaven technology selected for SBIR Phase 1 innovation award

6/29/2021

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We are pleased to announce that FII has been selected for a Dept. of Energy SETO Phase One SBIR grant award. The grant’s purpose is to develop and test a technology that will oxygenate nutrient-impaired water in off-grid settings.

Gas bubbles are released from the bottom of a pond when a snorkeler, whose hand is in the picture, disturbs the muck at the bottom
Gases released from the sediments may include methane when the water is impaired to the point of being starved of oxygen
FII conceptualized the “NanoHaven” embodiment that will meet this goal and will develop and test it with the support of this pending award from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office. Note that nutrient impaired water is a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that oxygenation will prevent, so a key component of our commercialization of this system will be related to climate change impact. 

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BioHavens and Bass

5/18/2021

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Fishing for bass among BioHavens is an exciting strategy for algae reduction on Fish Fry Lake

A smiling woman holds up a stringer of large bass harvested from Fish Fry Lake
The first three bass from Fish Fry Lake to be harvested in 2021 in our "grow fish instead of algae" stewardship program
​It’s just now mid-May and our water temperature has finally edged over 60 degrees, on top.  Fish Fry Lake went through its seasonal turnover a month ago, so dissolved oxygen (DO) was homogenous across the water table for a few weeks.  When that happened, bass were everywhere in the lake, top to bottom, even in its deepest reaches where DO normally diminishes as the season progresses.  We fished spoon plugs, minnow and crawfish imitations.  The use of “plastics” started yesterday, those plastic worms, probably imitating leeches, that seem to trigger insane bass action.  The official beginning of the new season started with a big bang!

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Predicting the Future of Water Stewardship

2/2/2021

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Recent developments in floating solar provide hope for the future of water

Having been afforded the opportunity to make a difference relative to water management, (after all, I have my own research laboratory in Fish Fry Lake) recent developments are exciting. Here’s what I’m talking about:
  1. Pandemic numbers of nutrient rich waterways are a recent phenomenon associated with current agricultural practices that result in orthophosphate and nitrogen concentrations in fresh water that further result in vastly higher volume of methane production than would occur naturally. But— tracking this phenomenon is actually straightforward. A $50 test will precisely quantify volume of methane, a particularly volatile gas, in water.
  2. Transitioning nutrient rich waterways back to health is now also straightforward. Nanobubbler technology provides a new and highly effective way to restore freshwater from methane production to a far more moderate carbon dioxide basis.
  3. Floating photovoltaic systems are supremely well positioned to provide solar power to achieve this worthy goal, and in the process to achieve healthy water along with massive methane, a potent greenhouse gas (GHG), reduction.

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Fish Fillets and Environmental Justice

1/29/2021

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There are many rewards to keeping water healthy, including delicious fresh fish

Healthy fresh fillets of fish are one benefit of healthy water.
Clean water stewardship has many benefits, including healthy, fresh fish for dinner!
With our good fortune, last night we dined on fillet of Haddock, a wonderful, mild flavored cold water marine fish, and Largemouth Bass derived from Fish Fry Lake, our research pond. We leverage nature’s wetland effect in Fish Fry, and cycle nutrients into healthy fish, instead of algae and cyanobacteria. Three of us had equal portions of both types of fish. The fish fillets had been dusted with chestnut flour and toasted onion powder and sautéed in olive oil. They passed muster even by my partner Anne’s discerning palate.

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Get US into the Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) Game

1/14/2021

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With the ongoing transition from obtuse and flat-out harmful environmental stewardship associated with Donald Trump, FII has quantified some of the impact of eutrophic, nutrient enriched agricultural water relative to greenhouse gas emissions. In a nutshell, by teaming with BioHaven’s nutrient reduction capacity, the Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) game can see bigger wins with carbon credit reduction revenue. By transitioning nutrient rich water, already at pandemic levels in the developed world (in particular here in the U.S.) FPV launches will qualify for carbon credit revenue.

There are other “applications” for BioHaven’s tried and true capabilities. These include key habitat expansion for critical biota, like pollinators and the growth of native sport fish. Safeguards the world's natural capital, and promises biodiversity! But FPV has not, to this point, been a water quality pitch.

Our company has thousands of island launches under its belt, compared to just hundreds by the entire FPV industry. FII is the American embodiment of constructed wetland, but much more resilient, more versatile, and has a minimal footprint, particularly in the form of real estate, required to pull off a BioHaven water quality solution.

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Invariably Resilient Life

1/8/2021

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The most invariably resilient lifeforms are some of Mother Nature's many prototypes.

Human-scale thinking relative to durability and resilience does not necessarily track with environmental reality. Humans and our science are caught up in intellectual inertia. Here’s a quick, but fundamental example: Today many wetland experts are operating within a belief system that is focused on a mistake. They believe that nature’s food web is initiated by plant life, specifically, by phytoplankton. In fact, in freshwater, this presumption is almost always wrong.
Illustration of nature's way of accomplishing Phophorus uptake

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End-of-Ditch Stewardship Woes Have a Silver Lining

1/7/2021

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First-hand experience of nutrient pollution led us to biomimicry to help solve water's problems

The author shown examining a peat-based natural floating island in Northern Wisconsin to gain a better understanding of how nature cleans water
Bruce Kania examines a peat-based natural floating island in Northern Wisconsin to gain a better understanding of how nature cleans water
My company has spent the better part of a million dollars experimenting with "magic pills". These take several forms in connection with water. But they are truly just experiments. They aren’t magic at all. They are like shooting at clay pigeons… in the dark.

There is a real, and simple, explanation for this. It explains why results are never exactly replicable in natural systems. Put very plainly, there are too many variables in natural systems. From our human perspective this is a problem. From nature’s perspective, this is biocomplexity. It’s a wonder!

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Natural Midge and Mosquito Management

1/6/2021

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In farming, stewardship is fundamental. It must include water. When it doesn’t, nature steps in and provides niche biota that fill every biotic opportunity with some form of life.

Minnows are natures remedy for mosquito and midge larvae
Fathead minnows flourish within the stream channel of a BioHaven StreamBed, with plenty of periphyton to sustain them.
In June here in Montana, conventional farming is tightly focused on silage corn and sugar beets. In this shortgrass prairie setting, irrigation is fundamental. Fly east out of Billings at night and trace agriculture by the lines of lights that depict where water occurs. You see a tree of lights branching out from the Yellowstone, or the Missouri to the North. Montana is limited by water. Eleven inches of moisture per year is the average in this setting.

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