Lake Apopka Muck Dredging
Can
growing hay on dredged muck ease Lake Apopka pollution?
By Kevin Spear, Orlando
Sentinel
9:39 p.m. EDT, June 10, 2013
For much of the 1900s, waste
generated by farmers, citrus processors and sewage plants spoiled Lake Apopka,
once a famed fishing hole. And for the past 30 years, authorities have been
befuddled by what to do about the mess.
At a cost of nearly $200 million, state agencies in the
1990s bought up nearly 20,000 acres of farmland beside the 50-square-mile lake
and re-engineered the landscape to minimize further draining of pollution from
the fields to the lake. That moderately improved the water.
But hopes for a quick cure continue to influence debates
about how to restore the lake, which straddles Orange and Lake counties. Of the
unlikely approaches already tried, some have actually helped. For example, the
aggressive removal of a trash fish called gizzard shad has had limited success
in removing phosphorus pollution from the lake — because each fish stores a
tiny bit of the pollutant inside it.
So the St. Johns River Water Management District plans to
talk about the hay-growing proposal Tuesday as a potentially low-risk but
high-gain option, said Robert Christianson, the agency's director of land
management.
The project may reveal much about the nature of the sloppy
muck and may remove a significant amount of pollution from the lake — with no
financial risk to taxpayers, Christianson said. "We think that it's worthy
of continuing to think about," he said.
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