Dilemma: Cattails that clean Lake Druid could strangle it
One of Orlando’s least polluted lakes, long hidden but now scenery for a new park, owes its condition to a riotous growth of cattails that both cleanse and threaten to strangle it.
That makes Lake Druid, with water quality that ranks as fourth healthiest of 94 lakes in Orlando, a paradox for the city.
Although native, officials say the cattails are growing out of control because they thrive on absorbing pollution of urban runoff. Removing too much of them could leave Druid as impaired as better-known city lakes, such as Davis, Lancaster and Lawsona.
“That lake is extremely healthy because of the cattails,” said Lisa Henry, a city official overseeing pollution prevention and lake health. “My biggest fear is we would clean up this lake and we would crash it.”
The city, however, is compelled to do something about the cattails. Most of Druid is in the Audubon Park neighborhood. Adjoining the lake’s southeast corner is Lake Druid Park, which opened two years
ago after a costly cleanup.
The park property, once part of the long-closed Orlando Naval Training Center, was given to the city in 2009.
The land came with a legacy of toxic contamination, which the Navy continued to remove as the city moved forward with park plans.
Also part of that legacy, Henry said, was an apparent ignoring of the lake under the Navy’s jurisdiction, allowing cattails to spread.
Today, the park is fronted by a segment of Cady Way Trail and has a community garden, fenced area for dogs, a pump track for bicycles and mountain-bike trail.
It also has what was long stymied by the Navy base on one side and homes on the other: a view of Lake Druid.
Park planners propose an overlook of some sort, but the cattails are a wall, blocking much of the scenery.
At 19 acres, Lake Druid is a little smaller than the city’s signature lake, Eola, at 23 acres. They have a similar, slightly elongated shape.
But Eola ranks 72nd among lakes for water quality in lakes, while Druid is a more natural lake — except for cattails.
Earlier this year, the city decided not to kill the plants with herbicides because that could result in an enormous amount of rotting organic material.
The city opted to go for the difficult and rarely used approach of mechanical removal.
Playing out over the past months, that task is being done with what in the distance appears to be a praying mantis.
Closer up, it turns out to be a floating, mechanized harvester, chewing on and swallowing cattails.
The city’s contractor has been paid $95,000 for three excursions with the harvester, removing 1,720 cubic yards, or between 5 and 7 acres of invasive plants.
A longtime resident, Mike Housel, said the effort has resulted in a mess and a small, but critical, kill of breeding fish.
Housel, known in the area for peacocks that shelter in dense landscaping at his home, said the partial removal of cattails has left behind plant debris that has been decomposing, causing a plunge in the dissolved oxygen that sustains fish.
He said that anything short of aggressive removal of cattails — as well as other weeds, such as hydrilla and thick pockets of muck on the bottom — invites disaster.
“There’s one, there’s another and there’s one over there,” Housel said, pointing at bloated, fly-covered bass. “I’m afraid the lake is going to end up as a Ty-D-Bol.”
He said his reference to the blue, toilet cleaner was a shot at Lake Eola, which city workers treat with dye to limit algae growth.
The city’s lake manager, Henry, said cattail removal had nothing to do with dead fish. Any die-off more likely was from an influx of stormwater, she said.
Bumby Avenue recently reopened after prolonged construction to rebuild pipes that funnel a torrent of storm water beneath the road into Druid.
Runoff from lawns and streets is the bane of urban lakes, providing a feast for plants, such as algae and cattails.
Many of Druid’s neighbors want the city to scrape away all of the cattails to revive the scenery, fishing and boating.
Tom Beaty said that nearly 60 years ago, he and his fianceé would swim across Druid from her parents’ home to a sandy beach that no longer exists.
Beaty said the lake then was a sand-bottomed gem; other residents said they could drink its water.
About 15 years ago, Beaty got busy with his mother-inlaw’s home, hiring a crew to remove cattails by hand; even drained and dried, the volume was in the thousands of pounds.
Today, he can launch a canoe from the home’s shoreline, while many other homes are not even visible behind cattails.
While out for a canoe ride, Beaty said he was discouraged the city didn’t harvest all of the cattails.
But he softened his view when told the city plans limited harvesting as needed to lessen the risk of spoiling lake waters.
“If that’s what they want to do, then I’m all for that,” Beaty said.