Lake Muck: Lake Bottom Gets Cleaning

By GEOFF FOX

gfox@tampatrib.com

Published: January 18, 2009

DADE CITY - To look at Middle Lake today, you wouldn't think it was once 150 acres of water filled with large-mouth bass, blue gill and crappie.

Hawks with prey in their talons still fly overhead, and rolling hills surrounding the lake are covered with rows of orange trees. But the lake, one of three accessible to the public in Pasco County, now looks more like a torn-up prairie.

On a recent weekday a young man in a truck pulled into the grass parking lot, but turned around when he saw heavy equipment rumbling amid piles of dark, peat moss-like muck near the boat ramp. Fortunately for aquatic plants, fish and other wildlife in the area, the machinery is there to help restore the lake to its former state.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission recently began a $248,000 habitat-restoration project that will remove harmful organic sediment from 33 of the lake's 150 acres. The sediment covers its sandy bottom, which sport fish need to spawn successfully.

"It's dead plant and animal matter that has built up over the years," said Gary Morse, spokesman for the fish and wildlife commission. "The sediment depletes the oxygen in the water.

"Fish lay their eggs in a depression, then fan their fins over the bed to move oxygen over the eggs. But this sediment goes over the eggs instead and it kills them."

Four adjacent landowners are allowing the state to dispose of the black muck on their property. The project began Dec. 19 and could be finished by March.

Diane Rice, who has lived near the lake for almost 20 years, said it has been four years since the lake was full of water.

"It once got so high it was over the road that comes into my property," she said. "That was back in the mid-1990s."

Back then, the lake was popular among local anglers and boaters. Apparently, people who used the lake were also good stewards of it, judging by the lack of trash unearthed by the state's bulldozers and track hoes.

While Rice said she wouldn't want to see "60,000 yahoos out there," she misses the days when the grass lot was full of vehicles and the lake full of boats.

She said the state first cleaned the lake in the 1990s, when workers in paddle boats removed "plants that were killing the fish."

"They've been very generous in taking care of the lake," she said.

As one of the state's 82 designated Fish Management Areas, the lake will be restocked with sport fish once it refills with water.

But even after the muck is removed, it's anybody's guess how long it will take for the lake to refill.

Kenneth Denson, biological scientist with the wildlife commission, said it could take "a couple of tropical storms or several months of heavy rain" to re-fill the lake. "It has to bring the lake back up to re-charge the aquifer," he said.

The state began removing sediment to improve water bodies in the early 1970s, he said.

"Sometimes Mother Nature just needs a little help."

Reporter Geoff Fox can be reached at (813) 779-4613.

additional information on Lake Muck and Lake Bottom Cleaning can be found at: 

http://www.LakeMuck.com  

and 

http://www.WeedRoller.MN