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Good Morning and Happy Friday:
I just spoke with Weedbusters, Inc. concerning the status of the harvesting. They will continue to work for the next week along Harborside Drive and just south of the bridge on the west side of the lake. You will also see them coming back to areas that have previously been harvested to round up plants that float back to the surface. From here, they will move up to Orange Lake Village and will harvest that material continuing to use the 110th Av staging area to haul the material out. Once the Orange Lake Village area is complete, the equipment will move to the very NW end of the lake. As a reminder, this harvesting program is to deal with the most heavily impacted areas, where navigation is completely blocked due to the over growth of Primrose Willow (see attached Before picture of an sample area). I have been getting a lot of calls about harvesting minimally disturbed shorelines and we will not be working in these areas. I am happy to help you prepare the necessary permit application and work with you on removal techniques. I was out on Monday and in 30 minutes one shoreline was cleared of some willow and minor cattail growth by hand pulling and the use of some gardening loppers (see Example 1). The sedges and other grasses will die off on their own given some time. To our surprise in there was mixed in some native pickerel weed, soft rush, and water lilies. We need to be careful not to remove those plants. We can help you with identification if you are not familiar with them. These plants provide huge benefits to the lake so the more the better. Lastly, please remember that cattails are native and some are good. It is when they take over an area and there is nothing but cattails that they are not so great. Cattails are excellent water filters and can pull a lot of excess nutrients out of the water. If there are others who are interested in community shoreline clean ups we can organize a big clean up day and have a huge dumpster available at the park for drop offs. We still have available over 100 Lake Seminole Clean Up t-shirts so I’d love a reason to give them away. Keep all the good ideas coming. Have a great weekend Kelli Kelli Hammer Levy Environmental Program Coordinator Pinellas County Watershed Management Division 300 S. Garden Ave. Clearwater, FL 33756 727.464.4425 phone 727.464.4403 fax 29 Sep 06
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