Hydrophyte Volume 22 Issue 4 - October 2018

The South Florida Aquatic Plant Management Society

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Volume 22 Issue 4

Highlights Historical Introductions of Waterhyacinth and Hydrilla into the United States Could Raising a 90-year-old Road Fix South Florida's Water Problems?

Southern Black Racers Outdoor Workers and Skin Cancer Artwork by Holly Sutter

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President’s Message

Board Members - 2018

As we enter the “slow” time of year for aquatic invasive plant management, although that is relative in Florida, now is a great time to reflect on what worked well this past year or maybe didn’t and make plans for the upcoming busy season.

Of particular additional interest is driving safety and the issue of transporting herbicides for your business. Being careful on the roads takes significant precedence for our industry considering how many miles many of you drive and the number of other commuters who are admirably adept at navigating a 2 ton vehicle and posting on ‘InstaFace’ at the same time or whatever it is they do while they “drive”.

Officers 2018

Now would also be a great time to review your required licenses, necessary hazardous material training and protocol concerning transportation.

A good place to start for information is the United States of America Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) website at: www.phmsa.dot.gov. There is a lot of good information on this site concerning the transport of chemicals on our roadways and necessary registration.

James Boggs (352) 521-3538

Most importantly, be safe out there! Please join us at the next SFAPMS meeting in February 28 for the best way to obtain CEU’s, connect with others in our industry and learn! More information to come!

All the best, Scott Jackson President

Scott Jackson, President (561) 402-0682 scott.jackson@syngenta.com Linda Wolonick, Secretary/Treasurer (954) 370-0041 linda@expertbizsolution.com Norma Swann, Immediate Past President (334) 741-9393 norma.swann@alligare.com Board Members 2018 Rose Bechard-Butman (954) 519-0317 rbechardbutman@broward.org

Hughie Cucurullo (305) 224-3562

boggsj@helenachemical.com hcucurullo@avcaquatic.com

Andy Fuhrman (954) 382-9766 afuhrman@allstatemanagement.com Lyn Gettys, PhD (954) 577-6331 Dail Laughinghouse (954) 577-6382 Rory Roten (321) 890-4367 Dharmen Setaram (407) 670-4094

lgettys@ufl.edu hlaughinghouse@ufl.edu roryr@sepro.com dsetaram@landolakes.com

Steven Weinsier (954) 382-9766 sweinsier@allstatemanagement.com

The Francis E. “Chil” Rossbach Scholarship Fund Funds from the scholarship are used to help defray costs for students taking classes related to the study of aquatic environmental sciences or related areas. The scholarship is open to anyone, and all are encouraged to apply. Applications will be accepted throughout the year and the scholarship awarded when a suitable candidate is found. Money raised by the Society during the year partially goes to fund this scholarship, the intent of which is to promote the study of aquatics.

For an application, please go to www.sfapms.org.

In Memory of Michael Joseph Bodle

Michael Joseph Bodle, 62, died August 26, 2018 in West Palm Beach, FL.

He was born on July 6, 1956, in Lafayette to the late John F. Bodle and Mary Kayser Bodle.

Mike graduated from West Lafayette High School in 1974 and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame. He went to graduate studies in Aquatic Botany at the Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL. He began his professional career as a Biologist at the Florida Department of Natural Resources in 1982, later working at the South Florida Water Management District, where he served as a Senior Environmental Scientist, retiring in 2017. A lifelong public servant, Mike made important contributions to the invasive species field, drafting Florida’s first “Melaleuca Management Plan” in 1989. This document became a model for many other invasive species plans across the country. He loved scouring used bookstores for old botanical works and his charismatic and approachable style made learning about invasive plants fun.

He served as President for the Florida Aquatic Plant Management Society in 2010 and as editor of the society’s Aquatic magazine for many years. He enjoyed writing and his frequent contributions to the magazine always offered interesting botanical information with at least one joke hidden in each article. He was an active board member of the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council, the Southeast Exotic Pest Plant Council and the Florida Native Plant Society. He also served on the Editorial Board for Wildland Weeds magazine.

He will be remembered affectionately by invasive species managers all over the world.

Mike treasured his time spent on the shores of Lake Michigan and loved attending Notre Dame football games with beloved friends. He loved great music - with tastes ranging from Elvis Costello and the Violent Femmes to the opera, was an avid reader, and served as the winning secret weapon at Trivia Nights. Mike also spent many years working with young Special Olympics athletes. He never ordered French fries in a restaurant but was famous for swiping them from lunch mates with an unapologetic “Oops.”

He is survived by his siblings: David (wife: Mary), of Indianapolis, Thomas, of San Francisco, CA, Kathy Bodle-Perez (husband: Augustine), of Bloomington, IN, Steve (wife: Michelle), of Stow, OH, and Caroline Mooney (husband: Mike), of Lafayette; nieces and nephews: Jeff Bodle, Elizabeth Karow, Christopher Bodle, Matthew Downs, Nicholas Bodle, Jacqueline Mooney, Megan Mooney and Grace Mooney.

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THE HISTORICAL INTRODUCTIONS OF WATERHYACINTH AND HYDRILLA INTO THE UNITED STATES

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This article was previously published in the Spring 2016 issue of Aquatics Magazine for the Florida Aquatic Plant Management Society. Used with permission.

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2018 Calendar of Events 2019 SFAPMS General Meetings February 28, 2019 June 13, 2019 September 26, 2019 Locations to be determined

2019 SFAPMS Board Meeting Thursday November 14, 2019

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If You Can’t Beat em’ Then Eat em!

Blackened Snakehead with Piña Colada Salsa and Strawberries Ingredients 1½ tbs paprika ¾ tbs granulated garlic 1 tbs onion powder 1 tbs dried thyme 1 tsp black pepper 1 tsp cayenne pepper 1 tsp dried basil 1 tsp dried oregano 1 tsp kosher salt

1 snakehead filet, skinned 1 pineapple, diced 1 can cream of coconut ½ bunch cilantro, chopped 1 habanero pepper Roasted red peppers, strawberries, and avocado for garnish

Snakehead Mix first nine ingredients in a small bowl.

Cut snakehead into four pieces. Towel off excess moisture, and coat each piece generously with seasoning. Sautee over high heat for three minutes. If not cooked fully, bake at 400 degrees for 3–5 minutes, depending on thickness.

Piña colada salsa Combine pineapple and cilantro. In a separate bowl, stir cream of coconut until smooth. Add six tbs of cream of coconut to pineapple-cilantro mixture. Add diced habanero if desired. Plate fish atop salsa and garnish with roasted red peppers, strawberries, and avocado.

Chef Chad Wells of the Alewife Tavern in Baltimore

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Could raising a 90-year-old road fix South Florida's water problems?

BY JENNY STALETOVICH Miami Herald | June 18, 2018 South Florida in recent years has been a soggy mess and 2018 is shaping up to be no different: May smashed a century-old record for rainfall to kick off a wet season that — for the third year in a row — began like it never ended, with water gauges already well above normal. But this year, Everglades restoration could offer some relief.

Nearly 30 years after they were proposed, two projects key to fixing the region's plumbing problem are finally nearing completion. A third, another leg of a Tamiami Trail bridge rising above the swamp with spectacular views, will be done next year.

By allowing more water to flow under a road that damned up the marshes and parts of Florida Bay for nine decades, the projects will unlock the bottom of the Everglades and begin to reconnect the increasingly unmanageable pieces of a vast system that stretches to Lake Okeechobee. The work should help revive marshes and leave South Florida better equipped to deal with harsher seasonal shifts and worsening flooding fueled by climate change and increased development. Only one stumbling block remains: getting everyone — federal and state water managers, farmers, wildlife managers, residents and a national park — to agree on exactly how to run the system.

"Completing Modified Waters and the C-111 is one of the most important milestones in Everglades restoration," said Shannon Estenoz, who began working on restoration in the 1990s as South Florida Water Management District governing board member before becoming director of Everglades Restoration for the Interior Department. In April she was named chief operating officer at the Everglades Foundation. "They're going to give us so much flexibility to manage water," she said, " in good times and in bad times."

Over the coming months, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will iron out an operating schedule, called the Combined Operating Plan, to move more water into Shark River Slough and Taylor Slough in Everglades National Park. Engineers have already started modeling water flow and measuring environmental impacts. By July 1, the Corps hopes to have alternatives.

"It's an exciting time because it means we're that much closer to regaining a lot of the restoration of that environment," said Federico Fernandez, a Miami lawyer who took over as chair of the Water Management District in April.

The two projects include a $417 million plan to reroute water into Shark River Slough, nicknamed Mod Waters, and a $25 million effort to fix the damage caused when the C-111 canal was carved into marshes and cut off water to Taylor Slough.

The 2.6-mile bridge, along with another 1-mile span completed in 2013, will allow managers to raise water in the L-29 canal running alongside Tamiami Trail a foot to 8.5 feet.

Last year, after South Florida got slammed with heavy rain, the bridge already allowed emergency operations that helped move water, said Chief Engineer John Mitnik.

"The two projects work together and with that construction now closer to completion, this year we'll be able to operate the system a little more aggressively, a little more differently than last year," he said.

But how aggressively will be up for debate. For years, disagreements usually centered on the balance between resuscitating marshes without flooding farmland and nearby neighborhoods. Lawsuits stalled work as neighbors and the Miccosukee Tribe fought projects over flooding. Those concerns have not disappeared, with tension between the federal and state partners worsening after the Corps issued a sharp critique of the state's proposed Everglades reservoir this month.

At a meeting last week, Water Management District board member Sam Accursio, a tomato farmer, quizzed Mitnik about the Corps' ongoing use of pumps, or lack of, over the last decade.

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Could raising a 90-year-old road fix South Florida's water problems?

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"That water is still coming south and we're damming it up again in South Dade," he said. "Nobody is holding the Corps accountable. Congress approves one plan and the Corps does another."

Earlier in the week, equally aggrieved park officials warned that state plans might hamper restoration.

The warning came during a briefing for agency scientists on the operations plan that included a review of the district's 2015 effort intended to "thread the needle and move water in different directions" in response to farmers' complaints about flooding. The district pushed for the plan, leap-frogging the sometimes tedious review process. When a summer drought triggered a massive 60-square-mile seagrass die-off, and anglers and Keys residents began complaining, the district added the goal of moving more water into Florida Bay by shoring up an old levee, increasing pump sizes and making other modifications.

"The idea was that through these seasonally and situationally aware operations, you could choose the operations most appropriate for those conditions," said Walter Wilcox, the district's chief modeler.

But the National Park Service warned that the more aggressive pumping of surface water complicates operations and needs to be monitored carefully. About two-thirds of water, according to park estimates, leaks from the park to the east or is lost to evaporation. To remedy that, the district wants to pump water back into the park once it leaks out.

But even a slight change in nutrients commonly found in farm fields or canals that contain stormwater runoff can cause heavy damage and choke marshes with cattails.

It's part of the reason changes are so closely scrutinized.

"We do have concerns about water quality associated with more aggressive pumping," said Jed Redwine, a park service ecologist. "We are three decades deep into

sending a message, and supported by voters, that we are going to rehydrate and make wet Everglades National Park that are likely to have effects on boundary areas. ... It's very important that this combined operations process [isn't] somehow thwarted by a late and urgent request for increased flood protection."

The district is also considering extending a 6-mile underground seepage barrier wall installed by rock miners to prevent leaking from rock pits another 15 miles.

But the barriers could cause problems for drinking water wellfields in that area that rely on cleaner water from the west. With a wall, scientists warn the wellfields could begin drawing more polluted groundwater from the urban east.

The agencies will also need to tackle the increasing need to balance the amount of freshwater needed in marshes to fight back saltwater intrusion from sea rise. Robert Johnson, director of the South Florida Natural Resources Center at Everglades National Park, estimates that for every foot of sea rise, the park will need another 300,000 acre feet of water.

The Corps next expects sea rise to reach just over two feet by 2060.

The two projects also only represent a portion of the larger Everglades restoration effort that is being proposed. For those projects to work and raise the L-29 canal to nearly 10 feet, another 2.6-mile stretch of road will need to be elevated.

"The reality is we function within a network of authorities and it's taken a lot of coordination," Fernandez said. "Everybody wants to get across the finish line. And we're really doing our best to get there."

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FISHING WORD FIND

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