Your primary
concern in these discussions has to do with the efficiency with which you are
able to marshal your resources of leadership, knowledge, people, and equipment
to move dirt … and ultimately to prosper. That’s where our focus will continue
to lie, and that’s why you’ll want to check in with our “Technology in
Construction” column every issue. But there’s another matter here that is all
too often overlooked, or if considered, apt to be regarded as pretty much a
regulatory matter … soil conservation, the bottomest of all bottom
lines.
Before you can so
much as scratch the surface of an acre-or-larger parcel of land, you have to
create and swear vile oaths to live up to stormwater and erosion control plans
that often seem to be—and sometimes are—exercises in governmental
overzealousness (efforts we cover in great depth in our Stormwater and
Erosion Control magazines). Even when we see the necessity for installing
and maintaining best management practices to counter the forces of wind and
water because of their impacts on air and water quality, rarely does our vision
include the effect our activities are having on the most precious and
irrecoverable of all natural resources, the dirt itself.
Right now, energy
and water hold front stage in our pantheon of public concerns, and without
belittling their importance (after all they’re the subjects of sister
publications, Distributed Energy, Water Efficiency, and Stormwater) their
challenges pale by comparison to soil loss. It’s one thing to deal with dust and
turbidity where we have the means to limit and remediate situations in time in
our own lifetimes. But soil loss? Here we’re talking remediation not only out of
our hands, but out of processes that operate in geologic terms, where the
replacement of just one millimeter of new topsoil will not occur in your or even
your children’s lifetime.
Think Greece
2,500 years ago, when it was a veritable Garden of Eden. Then think about it now
… for the most part, a rocky barren reminder of what lies in store for much of
the world, including us. There are areas in the US that have lost over half
their topsoil in the last 100 years, and it’s not coming back! So while the new
tools and the revolution they support are important to your prosperity, the
results of their precision and efficiencies will be felt by generations yet
unborn … a pretty good opportunity, don’t you think?