World's largest man-made floating wetland completed
Rotorua's football field-sized floating wetland is now complete and will remain temporarily moored in a sheltered Bay at Sulphur Point for the next few months to allow plants to grow and root systems to fully establish.
The environmental initiative on Lake Rotorua is believed to be the world's largest man-made floating wetland and contains more than 20,000 hand-sewn native plants grown from Rotorua sourced seeds.
The project is a partnership of Rotorua District Council, Bay of Plenty Regional Council and Te Arawa Lakes Trust.
It is estimated that the floating island will remove up to four tonnes of Nitrogen and over 1,000 kilograms of phosphorus from the lake every year.
As well as helping improve Lake Rotorua's water quality the wetland will also promote the district as it has been constructed to spell out the word Rotorua' in giant floating letters.
The 5,000 square metre structure is 160 metres in length by 40 metres wide and a fibre mat covering its surface is constructed from half a million recycled plastic soft drink bottles. Native plants have been sewn into matting.
Rotorua mayor Kevin Winters said construction of a large-scale wetland was an environmental consent requirement to compensate in part for reducing an area of land-based wetlands when the city's airport runway was extended.
We expect the floating wetland to capture attention worldwide as an innovative environmental improvement measure. However we anticipate it will also become an intriguing addition to our region's diverse tourism product.
Bay of Plenty Regional Council chairman John Cronin said science showed that strategically located floating wetlands were at least four times more effective at stripping nutrients from water, like Nitrogen and Phosphorus, than conventional terrestrial wetlands.
Te Arawa Lakes Trust chairman Toby Curtis said the trust was also right behind the initiative as it will be a significant contributor to the future sustainability of the district's largest lake.
A ceremony was currently being planned for later in the year to launch the floating wetland which would then be towed on a five kilometre journey across the lake from the rohe of Ngati Whakaue to its final anchorage near the airport in the rohe of Ngati Uenukukopako.