ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Florida officials say they're considering a controversial cure for a polluted lake by encouraging an aquatic weed considered a nuisance by some to grow there.
Costly environmental rehabilitation efforts in polluted Lake Apopka have had little effect, leading the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to turn to the imported Asian plant known as hydrilla, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Sunday.
Opponents of the proposal say the foreign plant would devastate native varieties if allowed to spread, while hunting and fishing advocates say the fast-growing plant would create habitat for ducks and largemouth bass in the nearly 50-square-mile lake.
Lake Apopka was heavily polluted in the 1990s as sewage plants and farms pumped their liquid wastes into the once-popular fishing destination.
Runaway algae growth created by the pollution has left a thick layer of rotting material on the lake's bottom.
Some officials warn that if hydrilla were introduced into the lake, there would be no going back.
"Hydrilla produces a subterranean tuber down in the [lakebed] soil," Bill Caton, FWC's director for management of invasive plants, said. "Once that gets established, you can't eradicate it."
But others say something has to be done to bring the lake back.
"That's 30,000 acres that [potentially] has tremendous recreational value," said Skip Goerner, chairman of the Harris Chain of Lakes Restoration Council, an advocacy group for the lakes just downstream from Apopka. "We need to get something to jump start the lake, and one of those tools might just be hydrilla."
