Lakes Apopka and Minneola get new help in battles against algae plagues

The suffering Lake Apopka and the swimmable Lake Minneola bear little resemblance to each other, but they have been provided a fresh course of help recently to fight off their common scourge, harmful algae thriving on water pollution.

Less than 5 miles apart, Lake Minneola next to Clermont and Lake Apopka on the border of Lake and Orange counties are at different stages in their algae battles. The treatments they received in mid-December are promising but unproven.

“We’ve put ourselves on a bit of a new learning curve,” said Dean Dobberfuhl, a state water manager, referring particularly to a project at Lake Apopka.

“With these new infrastructure projects, we do a lot of modeling up front about where to put them, how to operate them and what we think will happen,” Dobberfuhl said. “But the real world often doesn’t work like models.”