Non-native plants clog Japanese river
October 22nd, 2008 by James
Part of the Kyu-yoshino river in Kagoshima Prefecture has turned green:
The surface of the river is covered in water lettuce plants. Water lettuce is not native to Japan, and it is illegal to cultivate it here, but somehow a few plants managed to find their way into the river and multiply. It is feared that the plants are suffocating the river and killing local plants and fish, so authorities are making their best efforts to remove all the water lettuce. They expect the clean-up to cost hundreds of millions of yen.
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Too bad it’s not edible. Would have made one heck of a salad bar.
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hundreds of millions of yen?
If the extent of the problem is just what’s in the photo, I can do it for 1 million plus boat rental expenses by myself in a week.
And I’ll charge a mere 10 million yen to the government.
Shit, give homeless guys 100 yen per kilo gathered.
Why do I slave away at my job when the environmental cleanup business looks so lucrative? And it’s not like this is hazardous waste or anything.
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A cleanup costing hundreds of millions of yen? Haven’t these guys heard of napalm and flamethrowers? Much cheaper, very effective, and a whole lot more fun.
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KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!^^
na srsly that would damage the river even more^^
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Ask any British gardener about Japanese Knotweed and you’ll probably get a look of unrestrained horror. Unfortunately the Japanese won’t be getting much sympathy from us.
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SYMPATHY!? NO SYMPATHY! Because we totally unleashed Japanese Knotweed on Britain in a surprise attack with the full intent to slowly strangle the native wildlife with a belligerent alien species! It’s even named after us! Let the gardeners suffer and know who did it to them!
Muahahahahah!
hahaha… ha….
… heh, or something like that, I guess?
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I am willing to bet this was planted by the people who will charge all that money to clean it up. So called “experts”.
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WHOA theres another Colin. I read his comment and was like “Wait. What? This is my first time looking at this topic”
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Farrell.
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ok, so I thought – “nah, there has to be more to it”
so, I actually followed the link to learn about it, and how ot clean it up…
“Control Options
Mechanical/Physical
Water lettuce can be removed by raking or seining it from the pond’s surface.”
someone is making a killing….
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Yes, because it costs no money whatsoever to arrange a fleet of trucks and cart off tons of plant matter and find a place to legally dump it. It’s just as simple as scooping it out of the water and tossing it up on the nearby roads, I suppose?
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of course it does, but not “hundreds of millions of yen”
I imagine it would make decent fertilizer, for example (from reading, it doesn’t seem like it would “sprout” or leave seeds if placed in a muddy field in the fall after the crop has been harvested.) I’m sure the professionals could think of a few other ways.
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oh! an idea (cause I’m in a good mood
)
let’s all get together for a big picnic/water lettuce raking party this weekend….do it for free… a few beers…ask the locals to help us dispose of the stuff in a bonfire…
probably get arrested or something…
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I’m down with that!
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If there is money in cleaning it up. Then there is more money in spreading the water lettuce to rivers that grow wasabi. You know those crystal clean rivers that Japanese brag about. Bet water lettuce likes clean water, too.
Then we can create jobs for foreigners in Japan.
Don’t burn the water lettuce. It’s golden…
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