Here's a unique solution to pollution caused by runoff in Florida's waterways.
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00:00What lies beneath this bed of blooming flowers could be the key to solving a serious problem.
00:07It's called nutrient pollution, and it is literally taking oxygen, choking, and polluting Florida's waterways.
00:15This water pollution is mainly caused by runoff.
00:18When it rains, excess phosphorus, nitrogen, and other chemicals from fertilizers wash into lakes and rivers.
00:25By developing on these wetlands across Florida, we've also really prevented the filtering processes for even a lot of the southeastern region of the United States.
00:36But if we want to revive the filtering capacities that they once had, we need to bring plants back into these systems.
00:47Jasmine Locke Rodriguez is an environmental scientist trying to save the waterways around South Florida.
00:54She's growing flowers on specially designed rafts.
00:57Flowering plant islands mimic the way wetlands naturally filter pollutants.
01:02The plant's roots act like kidneys for the flower island and create a natural filtration system, soaking up nitrogen and phosphorus into their stems, leaves, and flowers.
01:13Now these floating wetlands are very effective at what they do.
01:16They remove about 50% phosphorus and 40% nitrogen in any given waterway.
01:21The idea is to harvest the flowers and sell them at the local farmer's market, using the proceeds to help further grow the program and scale the impact.
01:30And then it benefits us to put younger plants into these platforms, which is good when we're talking about cleaning all these pollutants out of the water.
01:38For AccuWeather, I'm Leslie Hudson reporting.