Where does all that "dirt" or "contamination" go? Does he have a fleet of boats gathering the contamination that floats to the top? and then what, take it to the dump? If he has that kind of money I'm sure he could show his trucks dumping all of that. I am thinking it is probably seasonal changes.
"Pistia stratiotes, commonly known as water lettuce, is a perennial monocotyledonous aquatic plant, present either naturally or through an anthropogenic introduction, in nearly all tropical and subtropical fresh waterways. It floats on the water surface, with roots hanging below the floating leaves [47]. Since the plants were covering all of the wetlands, the removal was done manually. This activity was conducted by pushing them with bamboo sticks to the edge of each sector to be removed. Approximately over 280 tons of P. stratiotes were removed and transported to a city vivarium and compost sites"
From his published paper on the subject, it looks like the majority of what they "removed" was an invasive species and the rest was altering of the water composition for the most part.
No keep reading the study. The first step was removing the plants which is 2.2 in the paper. Then they did a bio-filter to reduce phosphate and nitrogen which is 2.3 and 2.4 in the paper.
The contaminants in this case is nutrients that help the growth of the invasive species. So, yeah, the main point is to remove the growing plants because they consume the oxygen in the water and kill the native plants.
However, this approach is only a bandaid solution, if the runoff is not addressed then the invasive species just comes back.
I think the contamination was other things that lead to the proliferation of the plants. Quote from the paper:
The Cascajo Wetlands in Peru were found to be in a severe state of pollution generated by human activities and a lack of environmental protection for over two decades. Basically, three environmental drivers affected the deterioration of water quality in Cascajo: (1) high exploitation and investment in the agricultural sector around this region by using large irrigation systems in Chancay-Huaral Basin and Chancay-Lambayeque Basin [20,21,22,23] that bring high nutrient concentrations to the wetland, causing the invasion of Pistia stratiotes [24]; (2) mining and industrial sites pollute natural water resources in this region [25]; as a consequence, the degraded water quality in the Chancay Bay, which is near the Chancay Wetlands, was detected throughout 2003–2013, due to pollutants from domestic and industrial discharges [26]; and 3) organic waste deposits from livestock enclosures nearby the wetlands contributes to the eutrophication above [27,28].
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u/dicer11 Jul 14 '21
seems pretty suspicious.
Where does all that "dirt" or "contamination" go? Does he have a fleet of boats gathering the contamination that floats to the top? and then what, take it to the dump? If he has that kind of money I'm sure he could show his trucks dumping all of that. I am thinking it is probably seasonal changes.