Catfish being used to clean pools of foreclosed homes

Debra Mitchell is a lead code compliance officer for the Village of Wellington. During the collapse of the housing market, the community was left with a large number of foreclosed homes.

Pointing out one example Mitchell said, "It has an unsanitary, abandoned swimming pool, stagnant swimming pool. There's no electricity running at this location."

The code compliance department was paying nearly 7,000 dollars a year to dump chemicals into the pools to treat the scummy buildup.



That's when Mitchell and some of her colleagues came up with an environmentally-friendly idea to get rid of the green. An idea with a much lower price tag of just 700 dollars. "Some of us got clever and decided to try the algae eating fish," she said.

At a typical home that needed help Mitchell revealed, "We have dumped 15 pleco algae-eating fish in here to take care of the algae situation." Mitchell believes that cleaner more sanitary pools will make the houses more attractive to buyers, as will the lower fees for upkeep.

Once the houses are sold, the new owner can either recycle the fish, or take them back to the lake where they came from.

With news video.