Mechanically Harvesting Water Hyacinth

I have spent the last year showing you the damage that chemical spraying does to our lakes. Today, I'm going to show you the right way to take care of the invasive water hyacinth. The good people at Texas Aquatics invited me to visit their recent project on Lake Kissimmee. They were contracted by the South Florida Water Management District and the FWC to remove hundreds of acres of water hyacinth on the southern shores of Lake Kissimmee. These hyacinths were mixed in with a very important spatter dock. Watch as this harvester plows through the weeds. An underwater bar pushes over the spatter dock so that the only weeds that get harvested is the floating plants. The spatter dock is left unharmed. When they get to the end of the hyacinth, they just lift the front table out of the water. These harvesters are one-of-a-kind engineering marvels. All of the moving parts are hydraulically driven by a small diesel motor, which only burns 20 to 25 gallons of fuel per day. One single airboat spraying chemicals will burn twice that. This project falls under an old contract with guidelines and price structures that include all different kinds of plants. Texas Aquatics bid on this contract four years ago without knowing what it was going to have to harvest. So they had no choice but to figure for the most expensive plants, and that is tussocks. But water hyacinth is much easier to harvest, so it would have been a lot cheaper. This was done on purpose by our government because they are trying to make mechanically harvesting look more expensive than spraying. Furthermore, before Texas Aquatics can get the final payment, they have to remove all their equipment off of this lake. This costs tens of thousands of dollars to remove all their equipment. Their harvester needs cranes to lift them out and put them on a tractor trailer. Even the excavator has to go. This is just another cost that has to be added onto this job. These old contracts need to be updated to reflect what they are actually removing, and new contracts allowing these contractors to keep equipment floating on the lake year-round so they don't have to have all these extra travel expenses. Once Texas Aquatics receives a commitment from our government, they plan on building mega-harvesters that will be 120 feet long and have a 40-foot wide cutting table. These state-of-the-art harvesters will be at least four times more efficient and will bring the price of harvesting down to compete with the cost of spraying. That's a no-brainer. Floating plants like water hyacinth and water lettuce can cause havoc on structures like the one located on the south side of Lake Kissimmee, clogging the structure and making it difficult when releases are needed for flood control. That is why they are harvesting these plants. Up until now, they have been spraying the plants with chemicals and letting them sink to the bottom. This is the first time in a long time that Texas Aquatics has been asked to harvest floating plants. I asked them when the last time it was, and they told me that it was so long ago that he couldn't even remember. That's a real shame. The harvesters move slow enough that fish can get away easily, but in the rare event that a turtle gets scooped up by the conveyor, like the one that you see here, the operator will keep an eye on it, and if it can't get away, they simply stop the conveyor and let it slide back into the water. What a sharp contrast to airboats spraying birds and gators with contact poisons. Texas Aquatics has told me that their operators are taught to constantly keep an eye out for wildlife that gets trapped on the conveyors, and I can tell you firsthand that I have seen them stop several times because fish or turtles get trapped on the table. Once they have a full load, it is time to take their nutrient-laden cargo back to land where they will offload these plants. The conveyor is simply turned in reverse, and they can offload their plants in a matter of a few minutes. There are many possible uses for these plants. Farmers can plow them into their fields or use them as cattle feed. Either way, their nutrients are now out of our waters, and someday, as we harvest more and more, there will be a market for these plants. The last thing they do is go back through the weeds and clean up their mess. They pick up all the broken pieces of weeds and get any leftover hyacinth. The spatter duck is a little beaten up, but this is just equivalent to mowing your grass. This is the only way that we should be controlling our invasive aquatic plants. Chemicals have no place in our lakes. It is time to cut the stranglehold that chemical companies have on our government and demand that they stop this spraying and harvest them instead. In my last video, I showed you where the FWC has a million dollars to fund alternatives to spraying. If you think we should do more mechanical harvesting, then I need you to call or email Eric and tell him to give some of it to Texas Aquatics so that they can build these mega harvesters. They will cost about $250,000 to build, so let them build one and let's see what it can do. They told me that they could have the first one floating by summer.