Lake Park closed - SINK HOLE

[hunter1005]

Sinkhole, at least 90 feet deep, closes Lake Park in Lutz

LUTZ — A narrow but deep sinkhole has forced Hillsborough County officials to close one of its largest parks.

The sinkhole already had forced the cancellation of the 36th annual Lutz Art & Crafts Festival, which originally was scheduled for Saturday in the park.

Lake Park, one of the county’s largest parks, is on land owned by the city of St. Petersburg, which has used it as a well field. The wells have not been pumping recently, officials said, and likely are not the cause of the sinkhole. The park is just west of Dale Mabry Highway and south of Van Dyke Road in Lutz and draws an estimated 300,000 visitors a year, county officials said.

Limestone deposits lie just beneath the park’s surface, said Forest Turbiville, the county’s director of conservation and environmental lands management.

“Limestone is highly porous,’’ Turbiville said. “We think that a piece of limestone just broke and fell.”

The cause of that may lie in the summer rains that saturated the soil across West Central Florida in July and August. Sections of the park had flooded and have been closed since August after the region sustained a couple months of record and near-record daily rainfall.

The section of the park where the 6-foot-wide sinkhole was discovered had been closed for three to four weeks while geoscientists with sinkhole consultants Ardaman & Associates assessed what appeared to be a depression off the dirt road that circles around the south end of the park.

The consultants told the county the “throat” of the sinkhole extended down 90 to 110 feet.

Whether the subterranean cavern is wider is unknown, Turbiville said.

Tuesday night, the report was finalized and the park was shuttered Wednesday morning, Turbiville said.

“We don’t want it to fall out with the public in the park,” he said. “Public safety is the No. 1 priority.”

About a month ago, he said, park rangers noticed the depression alongside the road near Lake Crum. One pushed a metal rod into the center, and there was nothing below the surface layer.

County officials are meeting with environmental experts and the city of St. Petersburg this week to decide how to proceed, Turbiville said.

In 2010, a sinkhole formed beneath a road in Lettuce Lake Park in northeast Tampa, causing county officials to shut down the park for a couple of months until the hole could be filled with sand and grout at a cost of $170,000.

Lake Park is a sanctuary for birds and wildlife and features five lakes, cypress swamps, pine flatwoods and hardwood hammocks. There are hiking and biking trails, picnic shelters and camping. The park also has an archery range, a BMX bicycle dirt track and two equestrian arenas, along with a remote controlled car track.

The 36th Annual Lutz Art & Crafts Festival scheduled for this weekend, typically hosts 330 exhibitors and is put on by the GFWC Lutz-Land O’ Lakes Women’s Club. Woman’s Club President Kay Taylor said the closure was painful for the club because the popular event was the club’s biggest fundraiser of the year.

She said the club only had three weeks notice, not enough time to arrange an alternative location. She said the event has been held at the park over the past 20 years but that tradition might have come to a close.

“We are looking at other locations for next year,” Taylor said.

[Cr0ck1]

Crazy. Was thinking bout going there to shoot.


Sent from Mossy Oak Swamp Bottom

[9dawgs]

Dang, that's right in my backyard! My wife and I ride our bikes there every week. The trail closed around Thanksgiving but hasn't opened up so now I know why.