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Microbes to battle muck in pond
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET, Times Staff Writer INVERNESS -- Richard Gray figures Cooter Pond is the perfect place to test his invention. The muck is up to 4 feet deep, filled with lead, oils and other stormwater contaminants that have washed into the 27-acre pond over the years. "If you were to look for the world's worst, dirtiest, sludgiest water, this is it," Gray said Thursday. All the better for testing his "Bio-Juice," an organic product Gray says will turn the muck into a digestible feast for trillions of hungry pond bacteria, leaving a clean pond behind. Testing is the key word: Gray picked Cooter Pond from a short list of lakes provided by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to demonstrate his experimental product, which has been used to naturally demuck several other lakes. The state agency will test the water in Cooter Pond monthly and monitor the six-month project, slated to start today. "The new technology developed by Dr. Gray leads me to the conclusion that we need to use this somewhere and begin to document the effects, evaluate the impacts, both negative and positive, because it has promise for use where present-day technology has failed," said Lothian Ager, biological administrator with Fish & Wildlife. The city of Inverness welcomes the free project with open arms. "Basically, we have nothing to lose," said Pati Smith, the city's Parks and Recreation director. "Any type of improvement in that pond would help. As you know, it has taken abuse over the years with stormwater runoff. That was basically a retention pond." But Citrus County declined to give its blessing, saying there are too many unknowns. "Apparently there's no patent, so Dr. Gray didn't want to disclose the type of bacteria or the contents," said Tom Dick, assistant director of the county's Public Works Department." "It just didn't seem like we had enough information to make a commitment to support it," said Dick, former director of Citrus County's aquatic services division. "In fact, it drove us in the other direction of, we'd better err on the side of caution and say we're going to hold someone else responsible in case this thing goes wrong." In an Oct. 4 letter to Ager, Dick said the county would hold Florida Fish and Wildlife responsible for any damage to Cooter Pond or the connected Tsala Apopka waterway. Gray's system uses a variety of natural microorganisms. Some of the microbes break down the muck into digestible bits for various pond bacteria. Other nutrients help the bacteria multiply faster to speed up the feeding. "We don't use chemicals," said Gray, who has a doctorate in physics. "It's all organic. It's not something that's going to hurt anybody." Ager said there could be a downside. If the bacteria consume oxygen in the process, they could take the oxygen needed by fish in the pond, he said. "There is the possibility there would be a fish kill," Ager said. "Because Cooter Pond is in such a sorry state, the fish population is minimal anyway, so it doesn't present the degree of a problem that it would in perhaps a bigger or less polluted lake." Ager will test the water quality and measure the sediment removal as the project progresses. If Gray's invention works, he said, it could ultimately make Cooter Pond a healthier home for more fish. County officials wish the agency would also perform other tests recommended by the state Department of Environmental Protection, such as bacteria counts and fish toxicity levels. As it is now, however, Dick said county officials still know little about Gray's invention, which was pitched to them just last week. "I would probably be one of the happiest people on earth if this stuff really did work and it became something usable not only in Citrus County waterways but other areas with a tremendous buildup of muck," Dick said. "I would feel much more comfortable if they followed the procedures DEP recommended and not just get here a week before they were going to discharge this stuff into the water." -- Bridget Hall Grumet can be reached at 860-7303 or bhall@sptimes.com.
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