Toxic Soil - Your Stories

Good Morning,

I have seen a lot of people that have come to Permies have varied experiences of having different types and intensities of pollution on their land. Some folks have dealt with their issues while others seek knowledge on how to deal with theirs. Permies limits discussion of toxic gick (for good reason) in most of the forums but here in the Cider Press we are free to talk about the subject.

Tell us about your experiences with toxic soils. How did you find out? What have you done? What would you like to do? What has been your journey?

I will share my current project.

My property exists next to a now defunct railroad line that was primarily used to bring raw materials to various mills in the area. The line was created in 1870 and ran until a few years ago.

I have not done a soil test to confirm contamination, but I could almost guarantee that there must be some damage done ranging from arsenic soaked railroad ties to the yearly spraying of chemicals to keep down any growth on the tracks. There is roughly four foot on either side of the tracks that is mostly barren but now mosses have found refuge on the ground.

I do not intend on utilizing the soil for vegetable production but rather pollinator/native plants. The soil in the area is gravely/sandy with a little bit of organic material. Grass has been the only thing that has grown near the completely dead zone. Going further away is a small hillside before going onto my property's lawn that is roughly four foot higher than where the railroad sits.

I have created a wooden berm at the base of the slope to slow down runoff and start capturing leaves/sticks/partial composted material to A. slow down erosion from the bank and B. add organic material back. I am chipping brush into this bank area and inoculating it with mushroom spawn. There is evidence that mushrooms can be used in bioremediation and I'm thinking of dabbling into this. Once I get a soil test, if there is heavy metals I can try and come up with a plan to harvest the fruiting bodies and disposing of them to somewhere that can handle the toxins. Part of my plan for this involves contacting a nearby mushroom grower and seeing if I can get a mix of their spent blocks to introduce a variety of beneficial fungi.

I'm not as bad off as others, but I have my little toxic gick removal project

My present property has run off from farm land into its pond.  It also has about an acre of pasture that was farmed about 25 years ago.

More interesting was that when I was searching for this property, a realtor took me to an undeveloped dozen acres.  The soil looked pretty rich for my area.  I noticed some white substance at various locations.  While my wife kept the realtor occupied with questions, I scooped up a handful of the white stuff.  An instructor I knew at the area community college identified it was salt. He advised me to check out the history with the locals.  I did, and found there had been an oil well on the property (Salt water is used when drilling). So, there was probably oil contamination in that nice black soil under the white salt.

For the punch line, when I confronted the realtor, she told me I could buy the property and sue the oil well company to force them to clean it up. Yeah, I stopped using that realtor.

I had encountered several times with contaminated imported materials and that made me want to be self sufficient as much as possible in gardening.

Once I got a truck load of horse manure that had been aging for 4 years and spreaded out in my new garden. Tomatoes had curly leaves and deformed fruits. Luckily the concentration was quite low and slowly it got diluted out.

A few springs ago I had 4 bags of potting soil from various stores and mixed them up. At least one of them was contaminated and caused death in quite a few of my potted plants and seedlings.

Last year, my husband grabbed me 8 bags of cow manure though I told him I didn't need any. It was too heavy to haul them back and return so I tried using them up. They were very heavy and dark with no resemblance to any cow pie I picked in a neighbor's pasture. Tomato transplants showed nearly black leaves and stunted. I still haven't figured out what's wrong with that.

John F Dean wrote:...I scooped up a handful of the white stuff.  An instructor I knew at the area community college identified it was salt. He advised me to check out the history with the locals.  I did, and found there had been an oil well on the property (Salt water is used when drilling).

Production from an oil well will often include extremely saline "produced water" which is separated out. These days, companies are required to capture it and truck it to deep well injection sites, which have similar geological formations. Back in the good ol' days they probably let it flood over the land when nobody was looking and went on their merry way.