Ocean Arks International was founded thirty years ago as a non-profit organization by Dr. John Todd and his wife Nancy Jack Todd. In the beginning they envisioned developing an ecological hope ship that was to be called an ocean ark. They intended it to take the form of a beautiful sailing vessel powered by the sun and the wind. Its mission was to provide the essentials for life support for environmentally damaged coastal regions around the world and to become a working symbol for an emerging ecological age. We then built a sailing craft we called the Ocean Pick Up and tested it in South and Central America where it served fishermen on three oceans.

Also concerned about the widespread deterioration of water quality, Ocean Arks turned to water purification. Over the next decade we developed, and in some cases patented, a number of ecological technologies for treating wastes and for water remediation. These natural systems technologies called Eco-Machines had several attributes in common. They were ecologically designed and engineered and employed a diversity of organisms. All five kingdoms of life forms were represented in their design which was based on ecological systems like marshes, ponds and streams.

We also wanted to communicate with the larger world. To that end, Nancy created a publication for our membership entitled Annals of Earth. It first appeared in 1982 and has been published three times yearly ever since. Her goal was to present a diversity of views and opinions relevant to ecologically conscious cultures.

They were put to work inside a bio-shelter in a wide variety of settings ranging from sewage treatment for a mountain resort, to treat septic waste in a New England town, a factory in England, a toxic-waste site in Tennessee, a food-processing plant in Australia, and a slaughter house in Maryland. They were also incorporated into three school buildings to treat sewage and to recycle water. This story is told by Nancy in her book published by Island Press, A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise of Ecological Design.

During the following years our projects extended widely. In one of the most remote islands in the Pacific we provided waste treatment for the Nature Conservancy. In China we undertook the remediation of a sewage-laden canal in the southern city of Fuzhou. At the same time we also designed major projects for Eastern Europe. It was a heady time. In China the sight of floating restorers filled with flowers and plants in clear running water was both gratifying and reassuring.

During this time our beacon was a Living Machine facility in South Burlington, Vermont in the form of a greenhouse not far from the shores of Lake Champlain. With support and oversight from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, between 1995 and 2000 it treated eighty thousand gallons of sewage a day. Its excellent performance was chronicled by John Todd and several colleagues in an article entitled Ecological Design Applied in the journal Ecological Engineering, Volume 20, pages 421-440, in 2003.

In that facility we studied over four hundred species of plants to understand their role in reducing the amount of sludge produced in waste treatment,. We also experimented with a number of species of fish as well as fresh water clams and snails.

With the EPA demonstration completed, we then used the facility to grow brewery wastes for nutrients we could use to develop economic products with commercial value and demonstrate that ecological waste treatment could become an economic engine for a community. Several of my former students joined what we called the ” Food Group at Ocean Arks." We further created food webs that produced fish, freshwater shrimp, lettuce and greens, tomatoes, earthworms, soil amendments, and mushrooms. This work was described in a technical article in the journal Ecological Engineering and in John’s chapter in the book Nature's Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies, 200), edited by Kenny Ausubel.

The South Burlington facility was a center of activity for several years . By late 2003 the original team had enough information to start businesses based on the ideas, proof that nutrient farming had a rich future. During 2004, the South Burlington facility was used by a University of Vermont graduate student investigating the potential of Eco-Machines to remove harmful herbicides from contaminated surface waters. It was featured at the Sustainable Cities Conference sponsored by the City of Burlington. The Todds subsequently moved to Cape Cod and closed the facility.

In the fall of 2004 Ocean Arks International became an all-volunteer organization and we shifted our efforts to a company we called John Todd Ecological Design Inc. JTED was formed in 1990 as a partner company and joint enterprise. In 2000, our son Jonathan became more involved and we built two Eco-Machines in Canada. The Eco-Machine north of Toronto was a wonderful system that recycled its water entirely. We built another Eco-Machine inside a bio-shelter for the YMCA in the Kitchener/Waterloo area of Ontario, It was very much like another system we built at the Omega Center for Sustainable Living in Rhinebeck, N.Y. Then over the past four years we have been shifting from a consulting firm to one that designs, builds, owns, and operates. We will provide service as well as technology for interested communities and together produce cleaner water.