Dig It: 4-H Club Honored with $100,000 Award
 A Jefferson County Club member prepares to seed clams on a Hood Canal beach. |
Members of the Jefferson County 4-H Club, Big Quil Enterprises, have been raking in the clams—and oysters, mussels, geoducks and cash. The club, which operates its own shellfish business, received the Northwest Area Foundation’s annual “Great Strides Award” earlier this year.
The $100,000 national award from the St. Paul-based foundation honored the club for making innovative strides in reducing long-term poverty in the community. The money will be used to continue Big Quil Enterprises and create living wage job opportunities for local youth, as well as share key lessons with other communities to expand the success.
Big Quil got its start through the Quilcene/Brinnon Connecting Schools and Communities Initiatives that ended last spring, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative connects students to community resources through service learning and project-based educational opportunities.
The students in Big Quil Enterprises seed and harvest shellfish at a leased beach on the Big Quilcene Bay on Hood Canal, and then sell them to area shellfish distributors as well as through retail sales. The students also manage the beach and use different shellfish propagation techniques, according to Pamela Roberts, Jefferson County 4-H coordinator.
 Big Quil 4-H members Jerod Newman, Chelsea Wong and Patrick Knox get creative using an empty mesh cultch bag used to hold oyster shells as a wig for Patrick. (Photo by Joe Baisch) |
Historically, Jefferson County’s economy depended on the now depressed timber industry. As a result, many areas of the county have high rates of unemployment and poverty. The aquaculture shellfish industry is starting to turn that around.
“It’s really important to sustain the Big Quil program as a model of youth entrepreneurship,” Roberts said. “Like any business, Big Quil needs to become profitable. They aren’t there yet, but I think the Northwest Area Foundation sees the potential, and that’s why they are investing in it.”
Bacteria Help Build Bioplastics, Naturally
The same type of bacteria that help break down paper mill waste could also become an increasingly viable source of environmentally-friendly biopolymers that can be used to make bioplastics, glues and composite building materials.
WSU civil and environmental engineering professors Mike Wolcott and Jinwen zhang have teamed with other scientists and engineers at WSU, the University of California-Davis, the Idaho National Engineering Lab, and the U.S. department of energy to focus on a class of naturally-occurring bacteria that produce and store polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHAs, which are chain-like molecules called polymers found in plastics, glues, plants, and even mussel shells.
“Polymers are what bind the fibers together in wood or plants or plastics,” Wolcott explained. “Until now, the plastics we’ve been using have been petroleum based. We could reduce our dependence on international oil if we could make the way we produce PHAs more cost-effective and fi nd new uses for a less-pure version of them.”
Firms in the U.S., China and Brazil have commercially produced PHAs using fermentation techniques for many years. But, Wolcott said, the current process is expensive financially and environmentally.
Wolcott’s research group is attacking both challenges. They are exploiting the fact that the same type of bacteria being grown commercially for PHAs are used by paper mills in their water reuse sites to convert phosphates into phosphorous.
“The production of PHAs by those bacteria has been fairly low,” he said. “One challenge is to find the right environmental conditions at the waste water treatment site to enhance production… we are trying to get these guys as fat as possible. By regulating the treatment process, we can substantially increase the amount of PHA produced in addition to reducing the phosphates to a very low level.”
Wolcott also has developed composite materials that can utilize a simple centrifuge process for extracting PHA into a crude form. This physical process is much less damaging to the environment and more economical than the current chemical extraction method. When used in the construction industry, the composites can provide a large market for crude PHA.
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Connections Contents
CAHNRS Kernels - Videos: Cougars and rabbits and bears, oh my! Plus: fashion show photos, 4-H kids, Logger Sports, and bioplastics from bacteria.
Special feature: Tree fruit research at WSU
- The Sunburn Doctor
- Pioneers of IPM
- New Orchard is Big Lab
- Searching the Genetic Landscape
- Organic Tree Fruit
- Food Safety
- A Rotten Problem
Web exclusive: video message from TRFEC Director Jay Brunner on the new research orchard and the future of tree fruit research
Web exclusive: in the depths of the Holland Library archives we discovered two lost manuscripts written in the early 1950s by tree fruit research pioneer Fred Overly: "From Whence Came: The Varieties of Fruit We Are Now Growing" and "History and Development of Apple Production in Washington."
A Trace of History: LA Students to Design, Build Display Garden
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