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Denver Breaks Out Sewer Vacuum For City Park Lake

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Jul 9, 2008 10:16 am US/Mountain

Denver Breaks Out Sewer Vacuum For City Park Lake

Reporting
Terry Jessup
DENVER (CBS4) ― Algae has become a big problem in City Park and the City of Denver has started essentially "vacuuming" the pond scum out of Ferril Lake, which sits inside the park off 17th and Colorado Boulevard.

Crews began the work Wednesday morning by corralling the algae into one area where crews were using a sewer vacuum.

It seems there's no easy fix as long as the hot and dry weather continues. They could spray the entire 24-acre lake all at once with algaecide and kill it all off, but that could actually make things worse.

The algae has prevented the rental of paddleboats and even the resident geese are choosing more time on shore rather than swimming through the smelly slime.

"It's horrible," said a park patron, "No ducks in the water and that algae and all that."

"It's pretty gross, algae everywhere," another said. "I wouldn't want to go in a paddleboat in it."

Park regulars say Ferril Lake has never been this bad. They believe the city's drainage project last year stirred up the shallow bottom, creating the problem

"I think probably when they drained it, they just didn't know what was going to happen," a park regular said. "Something happened when they refilled it and it got all off-balance."

"We have hired a contractor to come in and help us with some surface and sub-surface application of the chemical," Jill McGranahan with Denver Parks and Recreation said.

The city says the chemical will get rid of the algae, but if it kills it all too fast, it will rot and sink, and could make the situation worse.

"If you have too significant a kill at once of the algae, it depletes the water of oxygen, and then the fish and other aquatic life are distressed by it," McGranahan said.

In recent weeks, volunteers have been hired to scoop out the massive blooms.

The city also says while the drainage project was a contributing factor, there are many others they can't control, like way too little rain and way too much heat.

"Everyone is working diligently at it, but there's no guaranteed date when we're going to see that dissipate," McGranahan said.

The city says there's no overall environmental concern with the green mess. It's for the most part aesthetics, but they are under pressure to clean it up before the Democratic National Convention crowd shows up. Which is why Denver decided to use a sewer vacuum to start scooping some of the algae out.

Algae blooms can kill fish, but so far that is not happening at Ferril Lake.

(© MMIX CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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