Florida’s Lake Apopka remains crippled by another catastrophic and universal threat playing out right now: nutrient pollution from agriculture, sewage and stormwater.
Whether humankind can come up with a Hail Mary for climate change is years or decades away.
But a privately funded, prototype machine may be on the brink of finally cleansing a Florida lake that for decades has been bloated with nutrient pollution.
Lake Apopka’s woes are the same as what confronts many of Florida’s major rivers, lakes and estuaries: nutrient pollution feeding explosive growth of harmful algae.
A magic bullet may be at hand.
“Lake Apopka can’t take care of itself,” said Donald Luke, chief operating officer of Phosphorus Free Water Solutions. “What we are is an interim solution to reset the balance of the ecosystem of the lake. We don’t want to be here forever. We want to get to the point where the lake can take care of itself.”
The Phosphorus Free system will withdraw lake water, filter out solid particles and then treat that filtered water with a concoction of magnesium and calcium.
