Escorting Michael Shaw, the director of Todd's company, to my STS class one day last February, I asked him how much of the details he and his associates really know. Shaw was hustling down the hallway, pulling behind him a small suitcase with one of those extendable handles. I felt like we were running to catch a plane. The true workhorses of a Living Machine, he said, are the bacteria and microbes. But these are only the tip of the iceberg.
Nature works out the details.
I found the whole process very Zen. Ecology does the work for us. She reminded me of the situation we learned about at the South Burlington, Vermont, Living Machine, which treats ten percent of the town's sewage. All this gasoline came through and killed the plants in the first tank, Welhasch said. The operators were really worried, but they had to keep the experiment running.