Enzymes and mud
July 18, 2011
BY Susanne Retka Schill
Ethanol producers are very familiar with enzymes. And, being based in rural communities, they are also no doubt very familiar with muddy roads. I was fascinated by a story run in Agweek recently that talked about an enzyme product that solidifies spongy soils.
The product actually isn’t new. A California farmer, John Bottistoni of Fresno, Calif., developed it and created a Las Vegas-based company called International Enzymes in 1969 to manufacture it. “The Bottinstonis were hog farmers. They discovered that the feed material they were feeding their hogs would ferment the soil and soil would get ‘very hard from the foodstuffs.’ They ‘recreated the food materials and created an enzyme that would solidify clay,’” wrote Mikkel Pates in his July 11 article in Agweek.
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There’s a lot of interest in North Dakota about verifying the product claims through several demonstrations. Like many areas, North Dakota is super wet this summer. The northwestern part of the state is unusually wet, creating muddy rural roads that would be troublesome any year. Put on top of that a booming oil development in the Bakken formation with heavy trucks rolling day after day, and you have a recipe for horrendous road conditions.
This enzyme requires a certain proportion of clay in a gravel road, or subsurface material. Apparently, you work the road up to a depth of around 8 inches, spraying the enzyme-laden liquid onto the surface before repacking it. It takes a bit to cure, and then reports say the treated road stands up extraordinarily well to traffic – far better than any other method to try to deal with soft roads. It sounds a little pricey, but then the reporter compared the cost of applying the enzyme with re-graveling a road and it’s not so bad.
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If it works here as well as initial indicators are reported, it will catch on big time. Unlike southern Minnesota, where I grew up, the subsoils in northeastern North Dakota are clay with gravel veins being very rare. At the start of this wet cycle, close to 15 years ago, we had a summer where we got 2 or 3 inches of rain every week, instead of the usual one- or two-tenths. That clay subsoil gets amazing saturated with water. We had the local electric co-op come out to dig the holes for a pole barn and once the auger got below the surface, the clay just churned around in the hole like jeans in a washing machine. They ended up driving the telephone poles into the ground like a plunger, and using a truckload of sand to fill the holes to get the poles to stand.
Where there is a particular troublesome spot in a road and or parking lot, some relief is gotten by digging out the area below the typical frost line (10 feet up here) and laying a special membrane before refilling the hole. Finding an easier, and possibly better, solution will be most welcome.
It’s amazing what enzymes do.
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