….or just stop nuking everything

[TampaJim]

The harvested vegetation could become feed ... dried and straight up (possibly, depending on taste) or dried, ground and mixed into feedstock to create pelletized product. We have production facilities here which take restaurant waste, chicken waste, etc. and create pellet feeds. The issue ... financial feasibility. If it's $10 extra per ton, the corporate profit calculators (number crunchers) won't touch it. They rather let grandkids die from smog than make a $1 less per 50# sack of feed.

[1781ccT]

So my limited understanding of this is that hydrilla and other water based plants don't have enough of the "biomass" needed to efficiently be used for fuel. So it would take way more plant matter for the same amount of fuel to make it worth it

If the state was running it (which goes against my values of expanding government), they could fuel state vehicles for the cost of the equipment, more or less. They’d have a vested interest in harvesting to save fuel costs.

pipe dream, but trying to think of solutions instead of just bitching

[1781ccT]

The harvested vegetation could become feed ... dried and straight up (possibly, depending on taste) or dried, ground and mixed into feedstock to create pelletized product. We have production facilities here which take restaurant waste, chicken waste, etc. and create pellet feeds. The issue ... financial feasibility. If it's $10 extra per ton, the corporate profit calculators (number crunchers) won't touch it. They rather let grandkids die from smog than make a $1 less per 50# sack of feed.

A cold dose of reality, for sure. I’ve experienced the wicked cruelty of beancounters with some of my years in healthcare being with a for-profit megacorp.

It would be idealistic for an enterprising county or group of counties to create a product that could be distributed nationally. I’m using Milorganite as my example. It’s waste material from water sewage treatment, turned into a very good fertilizer. If something similar could be done, it could incentivize mechanical harvesting as a source of “income” (mostly to offset costs of harvesting), but would benefit counties by reducing the amount being paid out to poison sprayers. You know, cut the flow of money off

[hogzilla]

A cold dose of reality, for sure. I’ve experienced the wicked cruelty of beancounters with some of my years in healthcare being with a for-profit megacorp.

It would be idealistic for an enterprising county or group of counties to create a product that could be distributed nationally. I’m using Milorganite as my example. It’s waste material from water sewage treatment, turned into a very good fertilizer. If something similar could be done, it could incentivize mechanical harvesting as a source of “income” (mostly to offset costs of harvesting), but would benefit counties by reducing the amount being paid out to poison sprayers. You know, cut the flow of money off

They are using the harvesters in the 4th Point/Indian Prairie area on Okeechobee. Then they are basically squeezing it into a liquid form and giving it to some of the farms in the area to use for fertilizer to see if that works for disposal.

[cmbtvet]

Regardless of political affiliations the state government of Florida has it is obvious to me that development takes precedence over environment....its been like that for over 20 years and I see no signs of it changing.

It's been like that for much longer than 20 years. In 1906 the Melaleuca tree was introduced to south Florida to dry up the Everglades for development.