Wednesday in Fairbanks

Another unseasonably warm sunny day in Alaska. I feel real blessed with this weather. Many of the tourist oriented things are changing to winter hours or just shutting down. My first excursion was the waste water treatment plant. I am fond of these utilities because they are an untold industry doing a great job recycling our waste water into clean water and making biosolids. In Fairbanks they have a totally enclosed waste water system that uses high concentration oxygen to process the water. Only ten such plants are like this are in use in the country. The utility is a private public partnership with shared responsibility but separate civil and criminal liability by agreement. This arrangement has allowed the long range planning to be in private capital financing plans almost immune from political influence.Ken Brock the plant manager offered me a tour by their environmental/chemist and pretreatment coordinator person Jeff Mabie.  He was a super person who already got his moose for the season and second career is gun smithing and collecting. He owns over 400 fire arms of his own plus trades, buys and sells. The treatment plant was over 35 years old and looked pretty good but was showing its age with some equipment scheduled for replacement. They were permitted to process class B biosolids into class A with  a wood chip composting process. They mixed wood chips at 4 chips to 1 biosolids ratio. After the scheduled 180 degree air enhanced composting cycle the material was screened and the recovered wood chips were reused over again while leaving rich class A biosolid compost for resale.  Each year they sell their complete production of compost. It takes a lot of wood chips to compost their 10,000 tons of wet biosolids.  Jeff gave me a great tour from the beginning of the process to the final end. They  have a garden where its common to harvest tomatoes, corn and cabbage each year as a demonstration. They look forward to plant upgrades to anaerobic digesters, methane recovery and reduction of biosolids while meeting stricter regulations.
  My next stop was at Labrenz Landscape company where the owner Jeff Labrenz was nursing his badly damaged knee form a 4 wheeler accident while moose hunting. 1987 was his business start and he has had a nice run  but is concerned about the future of business thru these uncertain times. It's obvious he made several good decisions to be where he is at today. His mechanic person was Del. He is 70 and not a day goes by that he is not busy doing something. He also mines gold near Coldfoot with a large placer mining operation. He was very knowledgeable in natural resource policies, land uses and regulations. His life experience include loosing his home in Anchorage in the earthquake, surviving the flood in Fairbanks and living thru the boom in Fairbanks during the pipeline construction. He is a strong Alaskan survivor and loves the challenge of life here.
 By chance the Tanana Valley farmers market was across the street. It was great with vegetables, food vendors, wood workers and even some semi precious stone polishers. I could not help but spend some money for things to bring back for my family and staff.
 Off to the musk ox farm run by the University of Alaska. It was closed to the public but several of the beautiful animals were available for viewing form the parking lot. They  do research on larger Alaskan animals.
 The day ended after picking up my friend John from the airport and planning our next day events and dinner. Tomorrow we are off to the University of Alaska museum and the arctic circle via air.