Lake Apopka and planet Earth could both use an environmental miracle.
The world has yet to effectively curb fossil-fuel pollution projected to trigger extreme heat, and 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.
Both stages are designed to remove phosphorus, an ingredient of nutrient pollution. The solid particles will be spread across former farmland, where soil shriveled several feet in elevation from decades of cultivation and sun exposure.
The sludge from chemical treatment will be disposed of in a landfill.
“We’ve got no doubt this will work,” Luke said.
What climate change and nutrient pollution have strongly in common is the lack of will to tackle life-threatening disasters conventionally.
For climate change, that includes addressing auto emissions, power and food production, household habits, forest protections and more.
For nutrient pollution, that includes solving pollution from septic tanks, municipal sewage systems, agriculture practices, and getting homeowners and landscape crews to not deposit lawn fertilizer and grass cuttings into gutters.
Both paths are hard, complex and vexed by the politics of government regulation.
Nutrient pollution “is one of America’s most widespread, costly and challenging environmental problems,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Nutrient pollution has impacted many streams, rivers, lakes, bays and coastal waters for the past several decades, resulting in serious environmental and human health issues, and impacting the economy.”
One of the state’s biggest lakes, Apopka spans 50 square miles, or far more geometry than Ocoee and Winter Garden at its south side. Its shoreline is a dozen miles west of Orlando city hall.
In its storied downfall in the 1900s, citrus processing, sewage and farm discharges filled the lake with nutrient pollution. Apopka deteriorated from a bass haven carpeted with lily pads to vibrantly green with algae and dominated by trash fish.
The state bought out lakeside farms in the 1990s. An attempt to convert thousands of acres of farmland back into marsh brought a massive and lethal poisoning of birds with now-banned farm pesticides.
Rocked by that carnage, the St. Johns River Water Management District toiled on, removing phosphorus with an artificial wetlands and by removing the trash fish, gizzard shad, as living containers of the nutrient pollution.
Today is a new dawn for Lake Apopka.
Once a remote lake at its north end, cars now whiz by on the John Land Apopka Expressway and the newly opened AdventHealth Apopka hospital takes in a view of the former hot spots of dangerously high levels of pesticide. The lake’s former farms are a bird-watching destination.
Erich Marzolf, director of water and land resources at the St. Johns water district, said his agency has documented significant declines of phosphorus and a promising ecosystem resurgence of plants and fish. But a huge amount work remains.
Many other inventors and entrepreneurs have knocked at the district door, Marzolf said, promising a solution to Apopka’s phosphorus, and requesting that the district pay for testing and implementation.
Phosphorus Free Water Solutions took a different tack.
“Everything you see here, we’ve paid for,” Luke said. “We’ve not been paid a penny.”
Luke, a Florida veteran of the part of phosphate mining that deals with handling and treating water, said the company’s business model works because of a group of Minnesota investors from legal and financial backgrounds with a philanthropic bent.
“Candidly, any rational investor wouldn’t come within 100 miles of this economic opportunity,” said company investor and president Timothy McIntee. “It is so asymmetrical from a risk and reward standpoint and we understood that.”
McIntee said the project grew – in short – out of awareness of the deterioration of Minnesota’s famed land of 10,000 lakes, “which is a disaster for us,” relatively conducive water regulations in Florida and an association with Luke.
“Water is a public good and the public needs to invest in it,” McIntee said. “We’ve been willing to jump in, take the risks that we’ve taken. We would love for this to be successful and take off and let others expand this across the globe.”
The two described the project at Lake Apopka as set up financially for a seven to 10-year recoup in investment.
Instead, and this is part of the key risk, the water district has agreed to a one-year contract worth $1.16 million with a pay-for-performance clause. The company will get about $115 per pound of phosphorus removed.
It’s up to Phosphorus Free to prove that further contacts are worthwhile to the district, Luke and McIntee said.
Previous work by the water district to remove phosphorus cost $79 per pound using an artificial marsh and $78 per pound by harvesting gizzard shad.
Those approaches take significant amounts of land or time.
In 2014, the water district rejected as too costly a proposal by AquaFiber Technologies Corp. in Winter Park to remove phosphorus for $1,000 per pound.
The water district hasn’t set a formal target for the total amount of phosphorus to be removed from Lake Apopka, but rather will monitor ecosystem improvements as pollution is sucked out.
“Don’t trust us until we deliver,” Luke said. “Just pay us for what we do.”
