MIAMI – A South Florida restaurant is making an effort to clean up the Miami River.
Kiki on the River, a popular Greek restaurant on North River Drive in Miami paid for a barge to come out Tuesday to pick up garbage and improve water quality.
The barge is called a scavenger vessel, and experts say it’s one of the most effective de-pollution vessels available in the world.
The 40-foot boat features a stainless steel trash basket mounted on the front, which picks up debris floating in the water.
It also decontaminates 600,000 gallons of water each hour by injecting 150,000 liters of oxygen.
The barge system is 100 times more powerful than chlorine in destroying E. coli bacteria. It can reduce algae counts by half.
And it wasn’t just the water getting cleaned up Tuesday. Volunteers were there to pick up trash along the river bank by hand.
Kiki on the River’s owner says they’re passionate about river preservation, so they do this several times a year.