Compromise

Today we focused on acquiring real world data about our issue as well as have a chance to explore the proposed development site. First, we took a tour of the waters surrounding Beaufort. We saw dolphins and sea gulls, as well as some beautiful homes and beaches.

After the boat ride we went to explore the wetlands and we took water samples to see what the nutrient levels were. We hiked through Maritime forest along several different trails while discussing the difficulties of developing in this area. Foremost of these problems is the fact that currently, much of the area is underwater and would have to be filled with sediment before construction began. Another very important issue is what to do with the sewage. The ground is super saturated already and it’s almost impossible for the sewage to filter through the ground to become clean again. The best option would be to build a separate sewage treatment plant, but that would be very expensive. We spent a lot of time touring the island looking for different types of treatment centers and/or septic tanks. Fun!

      

When we arrived back at the Marine Lab, we grew cultures of fecal bacteria from our different water sampling sites. By counting the number of colonies, we were able to count how many poop bacteria were in each water sample. As expected, the highest number of little poop colonies was grown from a sample taken from a very developed area (such as a marina). Just something to think about when you go swimming off the coasts of big cities. I’m definitely simplifying the matter, but you can understand the general point.

Later in the afternoon, we met with our whole cluster and had a very intense debate about what we were going to do (oppose the development completely or compromise with the developers). We decided to compromise, but the whole situation wasn’t realistic because all of the people at winter forum actually care about the environment and no one wants to build a hotel on wetlands. The developers decided use super “green” techniques in their construction and limit the size of their plans. Our group, the NGO, wasn’t as radical as I would have expected a real NGO to be. Everything was pretty tame.

Nevertheless, coming from a strictly science background, I learned an incredible amount about the politics behind development and conservation. The whole experience taught me to look at an environmental issue from multiple perspectives in order to come up with a well-informed solution.