Our lakes keep getting sicker – from runoff, from lawn, from deforestation, from antiquated wastewater treatment, from the natural process of eutrophication and atmospheric deposition as lakes and ponds, manmade or natural, fill with organic material over time and become marshes, meadows and forests.
To retain our lakes, we have looked to chemical or mechanical solutions, but such efforts have proven both costly and ineffective. One has to address the central problem — an excess of nutrients in the water, in both the water column and the sediment.
Spadefoot Ecosystem Solutions, leveraging technology developed by EnBiorganic Technologies, is bringing to market a “nature-based” solution that dramatically, effectively and safely removes excess nutrients and sediments, resulting in a rebalancing of the lakes’ aquatic environment. The alternative was to dredge, which given it’s costs, logistics, and disruptions, was a non-starter.
These shots were taken exactly a year apart: April 15th, 2024 pre-deployment, and April 15th, 2025. The results speak for themselves.
The next two photos were taken two days apart- September 19, 2024 and September 21, 2024. Note how quickly the pond clears. The last two photos were both taken a month later, October 27, 2024. People could see the bottom of the pond of for the first time in living memory.
This transformation was all made possible by EnBiorganic’s EBS-Di platform. The microbial generator was installed on site. Starting from 12 ml of solution, it has been dispersing live microbiology in volume each day into Sands Point Preserve Pond, and dramatically changing the health of the pond.
The unit we are running at Sands Point Preserve is a standard EBS-Di microbial generator (see graphic below). It dispenses 190 gallons per day.
For ponds and lakes 5 acres to 15 acres, we’d recommend the EBS-Di Max, which comes standard with a 200 gallon max tank, and dispenses 1000 gallons per day. For larger lakes, multiple units would be employed.
For larger water bodies, the new EBS-Di Pro dispenses 100,000 gallons per day from a single 40′ container. This will truly be a game changer.
EBS-Di stands for EnBiorganic Bio-treatment System and the Di stands for Dynamic Dispensing Intelligence. EnBiorganic is offering “Treatment as a Service,” with the EBS-Di remotely monitored and managed. We install and maintain. There is nothing the client need do. After an initial mobilization fee to get the system set up, we charge on a monthly basis for delivering our microbiology. This dramatically lowers CAPEX. We include regular monitoring of the water and sediment so we can refine our processes and so that you can note the changes in water quality.
This white paper, authored jointly by Spadefoot Ecosystem Solutions and EnBiorganic Technologies, “Technical Basis and Treatment for EnBiorganic Pond Bioaugmentation at Sands Point Preserve, Sands Point, NY” describes how the pond was restored to health is a very short time.
On October 27th, 2024, we presented our findings to forty environmentalists at The Long Island Sound Research Conference at The Sands Point Preserve Conservancy, and even gave them a tour of the EBS-Di, which we housed in a small trailer near the pond.
“Automated bioaugmentation” holds such enormous promise. What if we could heal Nature with Nature? What if the limiting factor had been the amount of bacteria required to rebalance the biome? What if dredging was no longer necessary since the microbiology consumed the sediment? That is what is happening at Sands Point Preserve’s pond, and it started to happen quickly.
The bacteria generated are strains of common soil bacteria (bacilli) curated over the decades by Enbiorganic’s scientists for having certain properties, like being able to digest in the absence of oxygen. That is crucial for addressing the issue of sediment. So many lakes and ponds are impaired because they are filling up with organic material, and that is lowering oxygen levels, making the lake shallower and hotter, and raising nutrient levels in both the sediment and the water column.
The bacteria within the generator grow by feeding off the nutrients from the lake or pond; they evolve so that they are optimized for that nutrient composition. This pond in Sayville has a lot of excess nutrients — from lawn fertilizer, from runoff, from septic tanks. This pond is 11 acres. The muck is several feet thick. With this emerging platform, an onsite microbial generator could clear all this up in time. Think of all the other ponds and lakes on Long Island in the same condition! This is a breakthrough technology, and people are starting to realize that.
Spadefoot Ecosystem Solutions offers a holistic solution to our local environmental problems. EnBiorganic Technologies gives us the tools we need to address surface water and wastewater issues, as well as the means to improve soil health and enhance plant growth. Further, Spadefoot’s expertise in planting native plantings, managing stormwater through bioswales, and in removing invasive plants at scale, means we can offer property owners and municipalities not only the means to heal their lakes and ponds, but also the surrounding community — it’s meadows and forests, it’s yards.
Our business is habitat restoration at scale, building sustainability locally. Healing a pond via EnBiorganic is really the first step. Spadefoot Ecosystem Solutions will then work with you to address the various causes of the pond’s degradation: Runoff, invasive plants, lawn fertilizer, septic tanks. We have nature-based solutions for each of these factors.
Reach out to us if you would like us to assess your lake and offer what it would take to return it to health. Automated Bioremediation is here.
