[USCC] water hyacinth

[Chaney, Rufus]

Dear Don DeGrassi and Listserve:

Others (in Florida) have both composted and fed water hyacinth from
water clean-up use. I saw papers over 10 years ago on feeding the WH. It
had to be dried somewhat like hay, and then was baled and hauled to the
farms where feeding would occur. It was a nutritious feed. When WH is
used to phytoremediate known contaminants, one needs to make sure that
the WH is safe for use as feed or compost. 

Composting requires some drying, and grinding. The C:N of the plant
material may be acceptable for composting of 100% WH biomass after
shredding. And one can compost any quantity that fits the space
available for operations. For WHbiomass from typical water (as opposed
to industrial effluents clean-up WH-biomass), the contaminants are N and
P so nutrient planning is needed for the feed or compost use. For direct
land application, the N and P would limit annual applications under a
nutrient management plan. It is hard for me to imagine a cut and direct
haul to farmland approach to dealing with the WH in the lake; rather,
the cut, air dry in sun and shred so that reasonable application rates
could be attained.

The fresh biomass will have about 90-95% water content.

Regards,

Rufus Chaney
Beltsville, MD

-----Original Message-----
From: compost-bounces at mailman.cloudnet.com
[mailto:compost-bounces at mailman.cloudnet.com] On Behalf Of Dan De Grassi
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 2:42 PM
To: compost at mailman.cloudnet.com
Subject: [USCC] water hyacinth

Dear USCC Community-
We have a 22 acre lake that has become infested with water hyacinth and
our Parks Department is exploring options for management of the material
after it has been removed and ground up. I have several questions, to
wit:
1. What amount of material might be there? We've heard estimates of
16,000 yds and 100,000 yds. Is there a standard method to calculate? Is
there a typical volume to weight factor?
2. What issues are involved in composting, other than the high moisture
content?
3. Is it the kind of material that compost operations might want as a
feedstock?
4. How easy is it to dry this stuff? How much volume reduction happens?
5. Does it have any feed value for livestock?
6. Are there issues with straight land application?
Thanks for any info provided,
Dan deGrassi
Santa Cruz County DPW
831-454-3102
Compost maillist - compost at mailman.cloudnet.com
http://mailman.cloudnet.com/mailman/listinfo/compost

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