news story / By Bob Doran

Water World

It’s also a platform where others can see first-hand some of the alternative tech Humboldters have been working on for years. “When people look at the technology they’re like, ‘What, a bicycle that’s powering a blender?’” said Grafman. “A composting toilet is another mystery. For people in Arcata some of this might seem almost pedestrian — here it’s completely alien.”

The project seemed a perfect fit for his class, Engineering 215: Introduction to Design, where “students work in teams with a client to address some real-world problem or opportunity.” Previously the E-215 class has outfitted the Discovery Museum in Eureka with renewable energy systems designed for kids to play with while they learn. The class also produced design models for the Humboldt Bay Center for Sustainable Living eco-hostel project.

In this case the “problem” was dealing with the Waterpod’s assorted engineering needs, said Grafman. “[Mary and I] worked together to come up with a list: ‘We need electrical energy. We have access to sun, access to wind, to water, to human power.’ We parsed those into individual chunks. And there were others: ‘We have human waste to deal with. We have food waste to deal with. We want chickens onboard.’ The students get these broad problem statements and work tackling real problems, and the client is able to help students learn while receiving tangible benefits.”

Grafman figures the process exemplifies the effectiveness of service learning. “The students were able to learn the engineering design process with a real client, and the barge has been capturing the imaginations of the visitors, from the incredulous to the inspired, in part due to the students’ creations.”

Locally designed components of the Waterpod include a classic CCAT pedal-powered electric generator called the Human Energy Converter (H.E.C.). There’s also a hydroponic system growing herbs for the kitchen, a dry composting toilet (akin to an outhouse) and a high-tech filtered rainwater catchment system (like an old-fashioned cistern, but safer) with a hydropower system capturing energy from the overflow. A high-tech chicken coop designed by a team of students was adapted by a New York artist utilizing a repurposed shipping crate.

“An impressive part of the barge is the graywater system, an on-barge subsurface graywater marsh designed by Tressie Word that I’m pretty sure is the first of its kind,” said Grafman. “It’s like a micro-version of the Arcata Marsh on a moving surface — the barge tips and rolls back and forth. It’s just for graywater, not for fecal material.”

It goes without saying that the Waterpod is outfitted with solar panels, although the HSU students did not design them. And, Grafman pointed out, the kitchen includes a made-in-Arcata Sun Frost refrigerator and a Sun Frost Scrap Eater, “a stylish, high-tech composter.”

For Mattingly, “The Waterpod is like looking at the present and making a living sculpture that we can use as a test space to gather information about current technologies, and about how technologies hundreds of years old are as valid, if not more valid, than what we’re using today.”

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