Bluegill, Tilapia Added To Broken Arrow Reservoir Help Keep Water Clean

The City of Broken Arrow is using fish to help keep the water clean.

The City of Broken Arrow has a state-of-the-art water filtration system, but even some of the best technology can use a little help from Mother Nature.

Millions of gallons of water get filtered through these pipes every day.

"The water will come in through the bottom and go out the top," says Water Treatment Plant manager Lou Ann Fisher. 

She says before it gets to these filters, it sits in this reservoir.   

"This is where the fish are," she said.

The fish aren't here by accident, thousands of Bluegill and Tilapia are added intentionally to help clean the water by eating algae and bugs. 

"They're water fleas ceredaphnia dubia, they are translucent microscopic water fleas," says Fisher.

Lou Ann says the fleas clog up the strainers that filter the water before it gets to this main system, which is meant to weed out microscopic particles smaller than a red blood cell. 

"You're going to pay to do it one way or another and so I think with not having to feed a lot of chemicals in there to take care of the algae and the water fleas, we do it with fish," she says.

This fish costs the city about three thousand dollars a year, but Lou Ann likes that it's an environmentally friendly part of getting people clean water.  

"We can't use fish for every process, but we can use it for this process," says Fisher.

And for all the wide-eyed fishermen out there looking for a new spot, this one is off-limits. 

The Plant Manager here says the fish are working great for now, but if they can find a more effective, cheaper, and more natural process, they're all ears.