News Update
SJRWMD completes improvements to Lake Apopka Marsh Flow-Way
Staff report
Enviro-Net
The St. Johns River Water Management District completed a $2.7 million maintenance and improvement project to the nearly 20-year-old Lake Apopka Marsh Flow-Way, a constructed wetland designed to filter algae, suspended sediments and nutrients from the lake’s water.
The flow-way, located along the northwest shore of Lake Apopka west of the Apopka-Beauclair Canal, is a recirculating system that filters about 40 percent of the lake’s volume each year. It began operation in November, 2003.
To address a reduction in treatment efficiency, the district began maintenance of the flow-way in 2019 to re-level the wetland cells and reopen ditches that promote sheet flow conditions in the cells.
The completed project restored the flow-way to its originally constructed condition and reestablished its ability to efficiently filter suspended sediments and nutrients from the lake.
The district and Florida Department of Environmental Protection partnered on the project.
The marsh flow-way system covers approximately 760 acres and contains four independent individual wetland cells, in addition to levees, canals and ditches.
Since the late 1980s, the district’s work at the lake has resulted in average lake phosphorus concentration reductions of 64 percent while water clarity has increased by 55 percent. The recovery of clearer water and return of sunlight to the lake’s bottom has caused the regrowth of submerged aquatic vegetation, missing for 50 years, and improved critical largemouth bass habitat.
Other current projects at Lake Apopka include a pay-for-performance project that uses an innovative technology to remove phosphorus from the lake’s water, multiple projects on the North Shore that improve water and phosphorus management capabilities so that the pumping back to the lake can be reduced, and projects to accelerate the recovery of aquatic plants in the lake.
Lake Apopka, located about 15 miles northwest of Orlando, is the headwaters of the Ocklawaha Chain of Lakes and is the fifth largest lake in Florida.