Planting soil anyone? Fort Lauderdale repurposes truckloads of seaweed

MIAMI – It’s in every single place. Sargassum seaweed blowing ashore from the ocean.  

CBS4’s drone video exhibits simply how widespread it’s on the sand it additionally exhibits massive clumps floating within the water. 

“That’s nasty.  It’s not fun at all,” mentioned Annabella Fernandez who was attempting to benefit from the seashore. 

Fernandez would not like strolling in it and it is even worse when she’s within the water. “I have a fear of fish and stuff in the water and when you’re in the water and there’s a bunch of seaweed you get a little jump scared,” she mentioned.

Crews in Fort Lauderdale are out day by day scooping it up. They take truckloads of it to Snyder Park the place town is ready to repurpose it. 

“How many truckloads do you get a day,” CBS 4’s Ted Scouten requested Superintendent of Parks Mark Almy. 

“On an average day, if it’s just a very calm day, we’d get one to three. Lately, we’ve been getting up to 10 and 12 because the seaweed is so heavy and so high right now,” Almy mentioned.

There are piles of it right here and Almy welcomes all of it. Here is the place that seaweed is transformed to dust. 

“We just wait for it to rot and by the time it just decomposes it has very little smell.  Once it does start to decompose you can see that that process has begun and it becomes dirt,” he mentioned. 

The recent seaweed is combined in with older seaweed and dust — then sits on a pile for about 4 months.  It goes from being a nuisance to useful.

“This is the finished product with the composted seaweed this is what it becomes, good black dirt,” Almy mentioned as he scooped up a handful. 

That dust will get used for landscaping Fort Lauderdale streets — and it is free to the general public to choose up and use at dwelling.  “It’s the best dirt to use for planting. It’s very natural, nothing has been processed with respect to chemicals added.  It already has a sand amendment that keeps it fluffy for roots to go through it,” he mentioned. 

That dust is out there at no cost decide up by the general public at Snyder Park in Fort Lauderdale. It’s positioned at 3299 SW 4th Ave.