Floating wetlands have been discussed here before. They clean stormwater, provide significant wildlife habitat and create beauty.
The photo below was taken Wednesday, October 20th and is of a test platform in Gainesville, Florida where the University of Florida is conducting tests on the system.
The white barrier around the Floating Wetland isolates the water column and allows for analysis of the water immediately adjacent the system and system roots.
Pictured below is the Floating Wetland in Tumblin Creek Park, Gainesville, Florida. The system is fashioned around a 53mm recycled PPE platform - and contains Florida Native Aquatic plants.
The root mass below the platform cleans water with a variety of mechanisms, including - expansive root system surface area for microbes to digest nutrients, and for the plants themselves to uptake the nutrients and sequester in upper leaf biomass. The biomass is then harvested annually.
University of Florida scientists are studying the platforms to determine the efficiency of the systems and test results are extremely positive. Call Kevin for more information today!
Many views exist on nutrients in stormwater - the causes, the solutions, the impacts and more. I believe it is always good to read and understand different perspectives. The Miami Herald Article here contains many thoughts - and depending upon how the reader makes his or her livelihood and their respective eco-political views - they may or may not agree.
However, we here in Florida will be faced with a new statewide Unified Stormwater Rule this year and/or EPA's version of the same.
As Floridians, we should take the time to understand the factors contributing to how our rivers and lakes and waterbodies became the focus of environmental attention, and become proactive in keeping our natural resources in a healthy state - leave our planet a better place than when we arrived.
Environmental responsibility and clean water - lets all do our part - beginning wiht uinderstanding the issues...
Sometimes answers to complicated problems can be very simple. RJ & I were attending another Stormwater/Clean Water Trade show recently. New mechanical devices designed to treat stormwater adorned almost every booth. There were Jellyfish and Hippos (literally) and ground up rubber tires and pumps and valves and everything mechanical and everything expensive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpHHUg59q90
RJ turned to me after I commented on how the need for clean water was driving all kind of mechanical inventions and noted... 'but God has made the best process for removing pollutants - Plants!'
I couldn't agree more. Sometimes we are fixated on long equations and electrically driven motors with pumps and gadgets for removing those pollutants made with the same motors, pumps and gadgets - from our stormwater.
Maybe the simple, cost effective answer lies in Plants. I think RJ has a point.
Check out the video of the floating tussocks RJ and I built for a pond on a golf course in St. Augustine, Florida. The severe cold (low 20's) we had lately bit the canna back a little, but they are growing rapidly, drinking up the fertilizer runoff as quickly as it finds the way off the fairway into the waterbodies.
Simple technology. Use Florida native species - allow the cleansing and removal process to work, harvest the biomass and reuse as compost/mulch somewhere else on site. Cleans the water and saves Florida's cypress trees from being ground into landscape mulch.
Simple. Cost-effective. Why aren't we as a State using these tussocks?
An Interesting Perspective and Commentary on Stormwater and the New Year (Decade)..
Below is an excerpt from the Sacremento Bee..
We must develop new, innovative sources of water supply, including massive groundwater recharge, the complete reuse of treated wastewater, local rainwater harvesting and environmentally and economically sound desalination of both seawater and brackish water. We must price water properly to encourage efficient use and appropriate allocation. And we must reform and enforce water rights allocations.
Answer to what you ask? I'd reply - just about everything...As a youngster growing up in tropical South Florida, I'd spend weekends with my Grandpa who lived among the San Blas Indians while building radio towers for Pan American. He would tell me about how much they would rely on plants for food, fiber and medicine. And I think of how our Florida shores appeared to the first European explorers as they landed on our beaches - volumetric green! - A far cry from today's urban sprawled horizontal green. However, by bringing back volumetric green to the Urban Core we can immediately see cost-effective results in treating stormwater, providing wildlife with habitat, developing natural integrated pest management systems, provided a much needed sense of place to our cities' inhabitants, allow for food growing on a local and permaculture type basis, and much more. When studying the vertical green projects we've monitored over the years I am never ceased to be amazed at how much stormwater the plants drink. Critters requiring vertical green above four feet thrive because they can escape predators. As the ecosystem rebuilds, the Florida anoles and treefrogs eat ants, roaches, mosquitoes and termites - the perfect non-toxic, non-polluting via runoff pest management system. Vertical green allows to reach back and reconnect with our ancestors and their close relationship to volumetric green. Think about the holly wreaths we hang all over our walls this time of the year. Yes, volumetric green is the answer.
Check out the three new floating wetland info diagrams available on this blog to the right under the FSA Floating Wetland Info Diagram links. The FSA conference looks to be packed full of information and opportunity. Hope to see you there.
Just posted the Floating Wetland Newsletter - packed with useful information about floating wetlands here on the blog. To download the Floating Wetland Newsletter, simply click on the above right link.
