Ancient Papyrus Reed Could Hold Key to Water Conservation
Voice of America
Ancient Papyrus Reed Could Hold Key to Water Conservation
Faiza Elmasry
July 11, 2014
(excerpt)
Over the centuries, though, many papyrus swamps were drained. Gaudet says people saw them as “wasted” spaces that could be better used for farmland or housing. In the process, he says, an incredible natural resource was lost. In addition to the variety of items that can be manufactured from the plant, the swamps provide habitat for birds and fish, and help control pollution.
“Papyrus actually filtered sewage and runoff and silt all those years," he said. "And papyrus happens to be a very, very efficient plant in a filter swamp.”...
...“A lot of the scientists there, the engineers, are beginning to see the value of a filter swamp because it’s cheap. It can be put in place at all different levels," he said. "You can either have a simple swamp, you don’t touch it, you just leave the swamp and it works. Or you can have a managed system where you take a swamp, you take some concrete liners, you divert the polluted water into the swamp and you clean it up that way. So the managed system is what they’re working on now. This is the same filter swamp concept we have used in the United States."
In his book, Papyrus, the Plant that Changed the World, Gaudet writes that papyrus swamps may hold the key to stability in some of the most unstable regions in the world. As fresh water becomes scarcer, he says papyrus can help preserve the resource....
MORE at http://www.voanews.com/content/ancient-papyrus-reed-could-hold-key-to-water-conservation/1954281.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
... so was expecting something on the lines of a recently translated set of hieroglyphs
stating "Don't waste the water you morons!" just to prove that we haven't learned
much over the last couple of thousand years ...
Thanks for posting - the papyrus plant is a wonderful thing!
