Finding a Balance (out of class)

While talking in class about the balance between "soft" machines/living machines and more typical technology I was reminded of a book I had read for another class, "Song of the Dodo." In this book they discussed a long-term research project done by the WWF about how large a protected area should be before it would actually help the animals living there and keep them protected. They worked with 1 hectare lands all the way up to 100 hectare areas, and while some species did well (primarily species that preferred the light available at forest edges), not all of them did. For example, Blue Morpho butterflies had great growth, while species such as primates didn't have an excellent result no matter the size. We see this same problem in the USA, where national parks seem huge, but are they really big enough to support large mammals such as wolves?

The balance that we talked about was interesting in the same way because while we talked all I could think about was that some areas might work well with the living water filtration (small towns or specific houses) not all places would be able to handle it. I worried that some places might not trust the water, even if all the chemical tests were the same, and that the fish or plants might be enough to consider the water dirty. Obviously something like the Denmark system of  explaining technology to the public would be useful here, but I don't know if the entire public would ever trust something like that. It also didn't help that they really didn't write anything down. To quote Myth Busters, the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down.