The Lakes of Heritage Harbour
Help Our Lakes
Don't use chemicals within 10 feet of any body of water. You have to tell your chemical guy to back off the lakes. Expect a few more weeds next to the lake in your yard.
Pick up trash out of the street. Everything that washes into the storm drain, goes directly into an adjacent lake.
Lobby the HOA's and CDD's to use less chemicals in their maintenance activities.
Lobby the HOA's and CDD's to maintain and improve the vegetation around and in our lakes.
100 Lakes
The are over 100 fresh water lakes in Heritage Harbour. Fifty of those lakes are in our CDD-South. The lakes in the CDD-South cover 180 acres and have over 12 miles of shoreline. The lakes are all fresh water and exclusively contain run off water from our community. The run off water comes from our streets, lawns, preserves and golf course.
Our lakes were originally constructed to serve as the catch basins of our storm water system. When it rains all of the rain water that falls in our streets drains directly into our storm gutters and then into the nearest lake. The storm water picks up dirt particles and lawn chemicals that were laying in the street. It also picks up storm water that washes off our yards.
Our lakes then hold that run off water and perform two critical functions:
First the dirt is able to settle out of the water.
Second the algae in the lakes begin eating the dissolved fertilizer. Fertilizer's main ingredient is nitrogen and algae loves nitrogen. So much so that given too much nitrogen the algae eats and eats and forms large clumps (algae blooms or obese algae) in the lakes. Too much algae can deplete the dissolved oxygen in the lakes and kill the fish.
To help keep the algae skinny aquatic plants also consume nitrogen and help reduce obese algae.
Algae and aquatic plants directly feed the fish and other small critters in our lakes. These fish attract birds that eat the fish and provide the scenic beauty of our lakes.
As the water is cleaned by our lakes it is slowly released into our wetland and preserve areas.
It's The Wildlife
We don't love our lakes because of their water filtration capacity. We love our lakes because of the wildlife that they support. Bald eagles to black river otters live and eat based on the food and protection that our lakes afford.
Help the lakes and help all of our critters. The simple things we can do will have a significant and direct impact on our lakes. Better yet, the things we can do close to our homes will have a diect impact on the lakes nearest out homes.
Tell your chemical company not to use any fertilizer or other chemical within 10 feet of any lake. That is actually the law but some chemical companies may feel that the homeowner can not understand why their grass has a few more weeds in it close to the lake. Lift up your eyes and enjoy the beauty of nature and look past a few weeds.
Pick up trash out of the street. Every piece of trash and empty soda bottle left in the street will wash into one of our lakes during the next rain.
Lobby your HOA and CDD to maintain and improve the aquatic plants that line some of our lakes. Lank areas with aquatics plants in them are 10 times as productive in food growth than baren lake are.
Improve and maintain the cable grass beds that are normally found on our lakes directly next to the golf course. These beds provide food and nesting beds for many of our animals.
For more information on how to improve our lakes please see the attached booklet.