Comments on: Boise Purchases More Out of County Land

By: Lee Lay

Lee Lay — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:06:48 +0000

A: Cyclops is right, it wreeketh of a payback. any one elses land would not wreek.
B: Farmers are apparently still exempt from the clean water act. It makes me mad as hell that they discharge all the phosphorus and they have the land to treat the water before it leaves thier property! They want me to pay for thier abuse!

By: The Boise Picayune

The Boise Picayune — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:49:34 +0000

While this is a truly innovative plan and an example of the fine work engineers can do when the politicians don’t stick their fingers in the pie, there exist potentially disastrous consequences of building wetlands in what is know colloquially as “West Nile Alley”

It’s being watched by other municipalities because of its promise of a “cheap” fix to a complicated problem

By: Clancy

Clancy — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:51:13 +0000

Sounds like a new use on something that has been around for awhile. Wetlands Mitigation Banks allow developers and anyone disturbing property to offset the damage with buying into these “Banks”. No different than buying green energy even though you don’t receive it directly at your house. Offsetting footprints(carbon, energy, habit) is becoming the new way to make money while feeling good about it.

By: dog

dog — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:51:06 +0000

I think this is a worthy experiment. The Boise River might be in the top three most polluted rivers in Idaho. By the time the water has reached the Snake it has been used 7-8 times. It is a cess pool during irrigation season. If the Guardian and most of bloggers here had their way, we would do nothing at all for our communities even if it did make sense, (according to the Guardian litmus test). Have a nice time fishing on the lower Boise River folks.
I suppose most here believe that A1 and C2 don’t share the air we all breathe.

$8,000/ acre is about the going price for that kind of land. (It has water!)

By: cyclops

cyclops — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:50:54 +0000

Although I am not smart enough to comment on the science here, it seems to be rather split. As far as the economic aspect of this “deal”, I am confused. We are to believe that the closest available piece of land for this experiment is over 40 miles west of the city, is owned by a former city employee, and we paid over $8,000.00 per acre??? Maybe poet Paul could do something with “ME THINKS THIS REEKS”! Somebody better have some good reasons for this move! Oh! Wait! We live in a city that doesn’t require the officials to have good reasons for their actions!

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:14:07 +0000

This is not just a “parcel” of land. It has to be pretty good size to do what they plan for the property. It takes time and a whole lot of filtering to accomplish what they are trying to get done here.

Land treatment of sewage is not something new and has been around for a long, long time. It works is the short answer and does it without a lot of machinery and noise. They will have to figure out how to get the water to meander through the property to realize maximum removal and that will take a system of some sort and a caretaker to facilitate the valves and gates.

The land may be in another county but the solution is a good one from a scientific approach. The city of Bakersfield, California did this more than 40 years ago to achieve the water quality imposed by the State of California back in the day.