Lake Maintenance

New!Bryozoa Explained

Lakefron Restoration Guide

Channeled Apple Snails Invade Florida Waters

Plant Management in Florida Waters

 

With the creation of the Lake Irma MSTU, we now have the financial resources available to properly maintain our lake.

In the past, lake maintenance efforts were reactionary. When the hydrilla or water hiacynth got out of control we would collect funds to tackle the problem. That yo-yo maintenance program was costly and guaranteed periodic poor lake quality conditions.

Steady MSTU funding is expected to reduce costs and steadily increase Lake Irma's water quality standard.

 

 

 

Going forward, the hydrilla maintenance plan relies heavily on the grass eating carp. The EPD estimates that 300 to 350 carp are required to adequately maintain Lake Irma. The EPD added 100 more 10+inch carp on April 10th 2009 to get to the 300+ total.

A hungry carp is our scaly friend in this hydrilla battle, so please do not feed them!

In order to contain future hydrilla blooms the EPD will spot treat large clumps of hydrilla during monthly visits. This will deprive the carp of easy hydrilla pastures forcing the carp to scour the lake bottom for newly emerging hydrilla areas. This plan makes use of cheap contact herbicides in hopes of avoiding the need for the use of the very expensive systemic whole lake SONAR treatments.

This plan requires the EPD to be able to locate large clumps of hydrilla.

We can help the EPD to locate the hydrilla. The Plots page allows discovered clumps of hydrilla to be tagged. The coordinates will be shared with the EPD.