Section A • Page 4 • tacomaweekly.com • Friday, July 5, 2013
WORKPLACE GARDEN CHALLENGE
TAGRO saves us from ourselves, and turns a profit By Kathleen Merryman kathleen@tacomaweekly.com
Gordon Behnke started Tacoma’s oldest workplace garden 21 years ago when he amended the soil on half an acre on the Tideflats. That garden was on the city wastewater management plant property, near the facility where they were making a new product out of necessity. With the treatment plant on the Puyallup River’s entrance into Commencement Bay, and some 200,000 people flushing and showering into the city’s sewer lines, engineers had to come up with a way to get the biosolids out the wastewater. Through the help of hungry hightech microbes, they figured out how to turn sewage into soil they suspected would be pure enough for farming. They named it TAGRO, and they sent it to the state and feds for testing. If it was pure enough to grow food, they thought, it could do wonders for a landscape that had been scraped clean of topsoil by the glaciers some 10,000 years ago. “When we found we had passed all the tests for root crops, I was the first one that put in the plants,� Behnke said. “I went out and bought 50-cent watermelon plants from the clearance rack.� Those watermelons did the Puyallup, and took first place. Behnke’s produce and flowers would take another 120 ribbons at the Western Washington Fair before he gave the rest of us a break. “I realized I was giving the best of the food to the fair, so we stopped going,� he said. Instead, he and his colleagues sent about 3,000 pounds of fresh produce to Tacoma’s food banks during the eight years of that half-acre garden. That was after they had shared tomatoes and onions with customers skeptical about the origins of this hot new soil. The sewage-to-table process can be a hard sell. Not any more, with most community gardeners welcoming it into their beds. Not any more, with the people who
PHOTO BY KATHLEEN MERRYMAN
HOMEMADE SOIL. Gordon Behnke, TAGRO biosolids supervisor, is growing, and sharing, artichokes, onions, garlic, squash, cukes and more in the workplace garden at Tacoma Public Works’ wastewater management plant. When they tell him they are worried buy so much potting soil, bark – and about the heavy metals they have heard truckloads of TAGRO mix – that the about in other cities’ biosolids, he lets product turns a profit. them know Tacoma addresses that probNot any more to the tens of thoulem at the sources. sands of others who come for a share of “We control the metals before they the free shovel-it-yourself pile. Behnke’s go into the sewer line,� he said. “We delighted by how many of them joke that have source control to make sure things it is “The Happiest Place on Earth.� aren’t being dumped. The storm sewers He is also happy to hear how many don’t go into our system. We don’t get languages float out of the do-it-yourself any water off the streets.� area. When visitors have gardening ques“People come in and I talk to them tions, he has answers. He, like many and get plants and ideas from around the others on the staff, is a Master Gardener, world,� he said. “Russia, Asia, Europe.� dedicated to the success of everyone Those are some of the plants he has who puts a seed into soil. put into the newer, smaller demonstra“If they have success, that success tion gardens around the grounds near the comes back to us,� he said. “We try not greenhouse he built, in large part from to leave people with unanswered quessalvaged materials. tions.� “I grow everything from seed except In the evenings, he sees the results for basil,� Behnke said. “I just can’t get when he walks his neighborhood. It is in that.� the North End, but the scene is the same Welcome to the club, Gordon. all over Tacoma. People are putting in The small gardens, he said, are his raised beds – in their front yards, side best marketing tools. Instead of the food yards and back yards. People in other banks, he gives the produce to visitors. cities talk about their “parking strips.� Tacomans call them “planting strips.� HOW DOES YOUR WORKPLACE GARDEN GROW? The trend, said Behnke, seems to Are you and your employer up for the challenge of a workplace garden? If have grown over the past 10 years. so, we want to hear from you. “They put in the raised beds, and they Tell us the kind of space you have, the work you do, and why you think a surround them with our black bark, and garden is a good fit. they really pop. That’s a huge reward, Let us know how you decided the size and form. Are you going raised bed to be able to walk around my neighboror in-ground? What is your planting medium? Will you go with food, flowers hood, and see the soil I had a hand in or a combination? What will you do with the things you grow? making,� he said. “TAGRO has grown to What’s your position on garden art? Do you fear gnomes? How about clown be a nationally-recognized program. We gnomes? have proved you can make great soils.� Over the summer, we will share tips and award prizes. Where better to demonstrate that Let us know what you’re growing at work at kathleen@tacomaweekly.com. than in a workplace garden?
You Have The Power To Change His Life.
( 3 # *3)+( (.3- * " )3 )3# **# 3 )3
$ %+* )3 % 3 &)*)3 ) # **# 3 )3 3 %3 , )' ( * 3 # ( %3%&* !+)*3 3% -3)$ # 3/3 +*3 3% -3#
Your support can provide free treatment for poor children with clefts. $250 Surgery.
$125 Half surgery.
$ 50 Medications.
Mr./Mrs./Ms. City
Telephone
Credit Card # Visa
MasterCard
$ Zip
Address
State Expires
AMEX
Discover Signature
My check is enclosed.
Smile Train, P.O. Box 96210, Washington, DC 20090-6210
1 &% 3& 3* 3$&)*3'(& + * , 3 ( * )0 &## (3 &(3 0 %3* 3-&(# 2 0 3 -3 &("3 $ )
&% * 3&%# % 3--- )$ # *( % &( 3 &(3 ## 3
Smile Train is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit recognized by the IRS, and all donations to Smile Train are tax-deductible in accordance with IRS regulations. Š 2013 Smile Train.
â–ź Parking
From page A1
alternatives and city-owned parking lots as well as target parking strips for specific uses. Parking spots closer to the courthouse and the main branch of the Tacoma Public Library, for example, could be limited to four hours, while the street parking closer to Bates College on Yakima would be longer. “We have a lot of multiple users out there,� said Interim Public Works Director Kurtis Kingsolver. Parking troubles around UWT, however, might prove more complicated to solve. Recommendations for parking changes there include: reducing the two-hour limit to 90 minutes, extending parking enforcement from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and ending all-day parking on Saturday. The main issue in that area is that students and local businesses are using the two-hour stalls rather than parking elsewhere and opening those stalls for visitors and restaurant seekers. Students, for example, park in the two-hour stalls when enforcement ends at 6 p.m., taking up street parking stalls during the prime dinner traffic hours. One fun fact of the city’s street parking system is that there are some 47,000 unpaid parking tickets. Those tickets amount – at least on paper – to more than $42 million, although collecting that money is largely unlikely. “We have a lot of what we call scofflaws who aren’t paying their citations,� Kingsolver said after tallying the numbers. “It was somewhat shocking.� A data dive into the report shows that the 75,000 parking citations on the city’s ledger total $42 million dating back more than 10 years. The average license plate in the system had three citations, owing $560. Some 27,000 drivers, a third of the whole roster of citations, had more than $300 in parking fines. More than 1,300 drivers had more than $5,000 in tickets. The report stated that 48 “habitual offenders� tallied $24,373 in tickets, and one in every 18 cars parked on the streets of downtown had unpaid parking tickets. “The majority of these vehicles owed approximately five violations, confirming that many motorists accumulate multiple tickets, choosing to wait before paying, or to not pay at all,� the street-parking analysis states. One plan to boost that collection rate is to use License Plate Recognition cameras in parking enforcement cars that could gather parking data more efficiently than through observations and questionnaires as well as potentially target repeat offenders with “boots� that lock cars in place until fines are paid, according to a field report on parking violations conducted by Paylock, a national parking company tasked with gathering parking information last fall. Unpaid parking tickets were found every 1.7 minutes during a six-hour scan of license plates.