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In South Florida, where the Everglades meet the bays, environmental challenges abound. Sea level rise threatens homes and real estate. Invasive species imperil native plants and animals. Pesticides reduce the risk of mosquito-borne diseases, but at what cost? WLRN's award-winning environment reporting strives to capture the color and complexity of human interaction with one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet.

A $10 Million Prize to Curb Toxic Algae

Nara Souza
/
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commision
An algal bloom in Lake Dora, outside Orlando

The Everglades Foundation is set to kick off a $10 million prize to spur new technology that might offer a solution to toxic algae blooms like the one now affecting the Treasure Coast.

Algae blooms are typically caused by runoff from large-scale agriculture or sewage, which can leach large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus into fresh water. Erik Eikenberg, CEO of the Everglades Foundation, shares the goals and potential impact of a technology that could reduce harmful runoff in the Everglades and beyond.

What is the George Barley Prize? 

The crux of this prize is to deal with the issues of excess phosphorus, excess phosphorus in fresh water. And this is a problem that certainly plagues the Everglades, but it also plagues water bodies around the nation and the globe, as we saw, for example, in August 2014, when the city of Toledo Ohio had to shut off its drinking water supply because of algae around the Great Lakes, in Lake Erie.

What will the teams who are competing for this prize money have to do to show that their concept works well enough to get it? 

The plan is to have a minimum of 80 teams competing, at the outset. And then, the last couple of teams will be spending a little more than a year, on the Kissimmee River, north of Lake Okeechobee, just south of Orlando. We don’t know what the technology will be, but it’s sitting on a water body, and the phosphorus-laden fresh water is being filtered out, and it has to be done in a cost-effective way. 

And is there a hard definition of cost-effective?

It’s a cost per kilogram of phosphorus, and the goal is to have that right around $120 per kilogram. It’s important that the technology somehow doesn’t cause more government oversight of this issue. So, this prize incentivizes the private sector to move towards new technologies that the farmer, or the rancher, or the city of Chicago, that I know is looking potentially at a solution here can tap into this technology and utilize it for the good.

 

 

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