Living Technologies Ltd: Restorers

Restorers, rafted floating ecologies, can treat wastewater, assist in the upgrade of outdated and overloaded facultative lagoons, suppress algal growth or help maintain the health of ponds and lakes.

These diverse "floating islands" are installed in new or existing lagoons and ponds to provide a simple, robust and beautiful method of treating waste and cleaning up polluted waters.

•	Ecologically Complex, Mechanically Simple
•	Low in Energy Consumption
•	Easy to Operate
•	Inexpensive to Construct
•	Effective at Reducing Organic Loading and Pollution
•	Appropriate for the Developing World

Restorers are an assembly of engineered ecologies incorporated into floating rafts to perform three main tasks. They can treat wastewater and sewage in constructed lagoons or canals. They can help maintain pond or reservoir health. Additionally, they are used to "restore" stressed or polluted bodies of water back to health.

Restorers utilise the widely recognised benefits of fixed bio-films to accelerate the natural processes found in a river, lake, pond or constructed lagoon by:

•	Introducing oxygen and circulation to the stressed environment that often lacks sufficient oxygen-rich surface areas necessary to maintain a balanced ecology;
•	Utilising native higher plants and artificial media as bio-film substrate to support rich microbial, algae and animal communities;
•	Acting as a chemostat and incubator by producing great volumes of beneficial microorganisms that flow into the surrounding water and feed on excess nutrients and organic pollutants; and
•	Providing opportunities for benthic communities to establish themselves in the bottom areas that were once oxygen poor.
•	Efficient airlift pumps and fine-bubble air diffusion systems add oxygen to the water as well as circulate water and nutrients over the Restorer's biological surfaces to stimulate the natural healing process. It is the complete body of water that treats itself.

Restorer Technology is borrowed from an analogous component in nature known as the floating island. These islands are formed as dense mats of vegetation - typically made up of cattails, bulrush, sedge and reeds - extend outward from shoreline wetlands. As the water gets deeper the roots no longer reach the bottom, so they use the oxygen in their root mass for buoyancy, and the surrounding vegetation for support to retain their top-side-up orientation. The area beneath these floating mats is exceptionally rich in aquatic biota.

Eventually, storm events tear whole sections free from the shore. The islands migrate around a lake with changing winds, occasionally reattaching to a new area of the shoreline, or breaking up in heavy weather. As one naturalist described, "floating islands act like kidneys in a system, providing the oxygen rich surface area that keeps the ecosystem in balance during extreme seasonal fluctuations."

A Typical Lake Restorer