Operation Porifera: Episode Transcript
Zoe Voss Lee
Hello everyone! This is Past Futures, a podcast where we explore the events of the second millennium that have shifted the course of the future. I'm your host, Zoe Voss Lee, it is April 28, 2080 and in today’s episode we will be talking with historian Dr. Ana Mangino and Dr. Andrea Binz, a world-renowned spongiologist in order to understand the role that a humble organism, the sponge, played in alleviating the the Los Angeles Arsenic Crisis, an event that laid the groundwork for the global reforms in the second half of the 21st century that mitigated global climate change and instituted the global circular economy that addressed issues of waste, resource scarcity, and extreme socioeconomic inequality.
The early 21st Century, also known as the Carbon Age, was defined by environmental degradation and the devastating impacts of carbon emissions. In the Western United States, California took most of the climate blow. Beginning in 1999, Southern California was plunged into a megadrought that never fully let up -- causing groundwater stocks to be over pumped, releasing small amounts of arsenic into the water supply. In the late 2020s, the drought reached a new extreme and Southern California had its lowest annual rainfall in recorded history. In 2028, Amazon Industries swooped in amidst Los Angeles’ financial crisis and purchased nearly all of the city's utilities, including the water system, opening the floodgates for the privatization of major urban utilities nationwide.
Many of us have likely learned about this crisis through the statistics: over 5 million people out of a population of 11 million suffered arsenic poisoning in the Los Angeles County area alone. Bottled water was in such short supply that low-income communities had little choice but to use contaminated water for daily necessities. But, what really led to this crisis? And how did it shape the world we live in today?
Now, historian Dr. Ana Mangino is joining us today. Ana, what was life like in Los Angeles in the year 2030?
Ana Mangino
Hi Zoe, thank you for having me, so great to talk with you today. Beginning in 2030, illegal overpumping of groundwater released critical concentrations of arsenic into the Los Angeles water supply. By March of that year, increases in the incidence rates of many types of cancer and acute symptoms of arsenic poisoning led to civil unrest. Families of those suffering from the first wave of poisoning sought answers. Powerful members of Amazon Industries were revealed to have knowledge about the unsafe levels of arsenic as far back as 2028. However, they did nothing to warn the public about the risks.
There was worldwide panic. It became clear that private businesses who had purchased water companies during the peak of deregulation in the 2020s had tampered with testing systems to hide widespread issues related to water contamination.
I'd like to share an archival audio clip from a livestream recorded by a journalist from April of 2030 that illustrates the fear and confusion people felt at the time:
Archived Interview
We are live in downtown Santa Monica. 3rd street promenade is unrecognizable as the Los Angeles Water Crisis continues. People are frantically searching for clean water. Protests have continued for 30 days as people express their frustrations with corporations that have placed profit over moral standards.
Amongst the burning buildings and blaring sirens, water scalpers are eagerly holding informal auctions, selling individual bottles of water to the highest bidder, with prices reaching $1000 per bottle.
I am now approaching one member of a crowd surrounding one of these “auctions”:
Hi, I’m currently livestreaming what is happening here today. Is this your first time going to a water auction?
“No, I have been here every week, but it's getting too expensive. I don’t know what to do next. I’m a single parent and I’ve practically spent my entire life savings so my kids can survive. No one knows what to do. Everyone is turning to the water black market but I don’t even know if THIS water is clean enough. If I had more money, I would have skipped town like everyone else who could afford it.”
Ana Mangino
Following Operation Porifera, the US government and several corporations sponsored a race to harness the abilities of a freshwater sponge that could neutralize arsenic. Leaders from around the world began opening their minds to nature-based solutions to not only the arsenic crisis, but to other socio-environmental crises as well.
Zoe Voss Lee
Thank you Ana. On the note of Operation Porifera, we have invited Dr. Andrea Binz, a spongiologist whose research on the usage of sponges in large scale water purification processes and bioremediation is based on the legacy of the groundbreaking discoveries made 50 years ago
Andrea, from a scientific perspective, can you explain to our listeners the discovery and invention that brought the arsenic crisis to an end?
Andrea Binz
Thank you so much for having me on the show, Zoe.
So, ongoing water quality monitoring following revitalization efforts by the Los Angeles River Master Plan revealed that the river actually had a decreasing baseline of arsenic over time. In 2027, a team of researchers from Southern California were surprised to identify a thriving population of Spongilla lacustris, a freshwater sponge, for the first time in the river. Downstream of the triad of wastewater treatment plants in Los Angeles, Burbank, and Glendale that provided a constant flow in the channel even in drought, Spongilla lacustris had essentially adopted a novel endosymbiont, which in this case was a mutualistic bacteria later named Candidatus Arsenophilium for its ability to absorb and mineralize arsenic, negating its toxicity to organisms that may eat the sponge or drink the water it lives in.
Operation Porifera received its name from this discovery--as the crisis began unfolding, research groups started working around the clock to see how the unique arsenic neutralizing capacity of the sponge could be harnessed to make up for the shortage in traditional reverse osmosis filtration systems. Companies from around the country were tasked with harnessing this ability of the sponge to create an affordable, easily distributable product to help struggling Angelenos.
Ultimately, in late 2030, SponGea, a company founded by the same team of researchers who had discovered the arsenic-neutralizing capabilities of Spongilla lacustris created the first sponge-based filtration system. It was first distributed in January 2031 to low income households that suffered the highest rates of cancers and arsenic poisoning symptoms.
Zoe Voss Lee
In layperson's terms, can you tell us how the technology of SponGea worked?
Andrea Binz
In a nutshell, the SponGea filtration device included a habitat for Spongilla lacustris and a simple bioreactor to grow photosynthetic plankton to feed the sponge. Once the sponge mineralized the arsenic over 24 hours, the water would dispense to a holding tank where it was treated with UV light, and then households could safely use that water. These systems were amazingly efficient--this species can filter water at a rate of 70x its size per hour, so just a 1 cubic inch sponge could filter enough water to cover the basic cooking and drinking needs of a family of 4.
Zoe Voss Lee
Perhaps Ana can speak to this--to my knowledge, it took more than these filtration systems for people to feel safe again.
Ana Mangino
Yes, distrust in both governments and corporations was so high that some people destroyed their SponGeas when they first received them. They feared they were part of a plot to control people’s minds or further poison them. It sounds ridiculous, but when you consider the social conditions that led to the arsenic crisis in the first place, it is not unreasonable that these communities initially feared the solution to the problem.
The turning point was actually when a group of activists began cultivating sponges in the Los Angeles River. They started creating their own filtration systems based on the open source patents for the SponGea filter. While SponGea created a top-down solution to the crisis, it was ultimately the bottom-up grassroots movement that gave communities the confidence and autonomy to confront this crisis themselves.
Zoe Voss Lee
Interesting, Andrea, can you speak to how the sponge filtration system was distributed around the world?
Andrea Binz
The unique thing about this particular filtration system was that, of course sponges are living, growing organisms. So they actually increase their capacity as they grow over time. And sponges can be easily divided for propagation--you can even separate the cells by grating them over a sieve and they will aggregate and reorganize into new individuals within hours.
Furthermore, as Spongilla lacustris exists naturally throughout the Asian, European, and North American continents, it was easy for international communities suffering from similar water quality issues to share and culture progeny of the LA River sponges hosting C. arsenophilium. All they needed were a few starter cells and training to build their own filtration systems. Bangladesh, which had suffered from a languishing public health crisis of arsenic-contaminated well water since the turn of the millennium, was a particular success story--with a few adaptations, this easily replicable technology gave villages and cities the ability to take public health back into the hands of communities and families.
Zoe Voss Lee
What you started seeing next was a global popularization of nature-based solutions. As the sponges cared for people by providing them with clean water, people fed and cared for the sponges. It brought a remote creature that most people never realized existed into a place of particular importance in their homes and everyday lives.
Now, nearly all of our technology is turning towards nature-based solutions in some way or another, from passive ventilation systems inspired by termite mounds, to the mangrove forests that keep sea waters at bay. Learning about the pivotal moments that triggered this transformation away from the anthropocentric mode of thinking that destroyed much of the natural world in the 20th and early 21st centuries, it is a reminder that our current day is covered in the fingerprints of the past, and that the future is currently being shaped by the present. As the actions of scientists, activists, and leaders mattered in deploying the solution to the 2030 arsenic crisis, each of us has the power to act today to change the future of humanity.
Thank you to our guests Dr. Ana Mangino and Dr. Andrea Binz for their contributions to today’s episode.
Andrea Binz
Thanks again for having me on the show.
Ana Mangino
Of course! Thank you for the invite and until next time!
Zoe Voss Lee
Stay tuned for our next installment on the final decades of the 21st century. Thanks for listening.