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DAN DeWITTGroundwater pollution and flooding are two concerns as the area around Brooksville develops.
BROOKSVILLE - As John Burnett waded through knee-high poison ivy toward the lowest basin in Peck Sink, the sound of drizzling rain was replaced by the rush of descending water.
A brown cascade fell over rocks and into a littered and algae-covered pool.
"It's flowing. Isn't that cool?" Burnett said. "We've never seen it flow like this."
Burnett, Hernando County's water resources specialist, was witnessing the sinkhole perform its natural function: draining runoff from a watershed that covers 17 square miles in and around Brooksville.
Because the basin contains many roads and buildings, and will hold many more in the near future, the county and the Southwest Florida Water Management District are examining the sink's role as a passage between the cluttered world above and the pristine one below.
Peck Sink, like other sinkholes, is a direct pipeline to the Floridan Aquifer, and does nothing to filter surface pollution from the groundwater. If a barrier of debris and silt forms in the sink, it creates an even more immediate concern: flooding.
Peck Sink, just west of Brooksville, was identified in a 1987 federal study as one of the most vulnerable in west-central Florida because it drains part of an urban area - Brooksville - and two major roadways, U.S. 41 and State Road 50.
Future development, including the new Brooksville Regional Hospital and the Southern Hills Plantation development, could compound the problems of flooding and pollution by increasing the load of contaminants in the watershed and encouraging construction in or near the flood basin.
"The long-range prospect for Peck Sink is very dismal," said Derrill McAteer, a retired developer and former chairman of Swiftmud's governing board.
"If the people of the community have one eye for the future, they better do something about it."
McAteer is one of several people or organizations that have recently focused attention on Peck Sink.
He plans to discuss plans to protect it, including public ownership, with County Administrator Dick Radacky and Commissioner Diane Rowden in a meeting this week.
Rowden, along with dozens of other city and county leaders, became aware of Peck Sink's imperiled situation last month when it was included on a tour organized by a county-sponsored citizens group, the Groundwater Guardians.
As part of a 2001 agreement to study watersheds in the county, Swiftmud and the county have identified Peck as one of six watersheds that need immediate attention. They are currently negotiating with an engineer to write a report on Peck that will cost an estimated $190,000.
The analysis will update a previous flood plain study completed in 1992, Burnett said, as well as estimate how much pollution flows into the sink.
Because water quality at the sinkhole has never been monitored, he said, no one knows the levels of impurities that flow into the sink.
What they do know is that "everything getting into that sink is going into our water source and eventually ends up in our springs," said Gene Altman, a Swiftmud engineer.
The U.S. Geological Survey study, from 1987, described Peck Sink as a complex of at least five separate sinkholes, "two of which form vertical shafts that are directly connected to the upper Floridan Aquifer."
With that knowledge, the view from above is not encouraging. The series of sinkholes is surrounded by woods at the rear of a pasture. A steep clay wall plunges 50 feet from the rim to the main basin. It is normally covered by green scum and debris - tires, light bulbs, soda cans and bottles that once held bleach or quarts of beer - deposited there by flowing water.
In the past, Altman said, trash was probably carried there not only by water, but also by residents.
"Way back when, sinkholes were places where people threw their old tires, their old fuel drums, etcetera," Altman said. "All that stuff goes directly into the Floridan Aquifer."
One fact about Peck Sink is well established: the potential for flooding in its watershed.
Residents received a reminder of that Friday, when ditches on either side of Wiscon Road filled with runoff and a sheet of water covered parts of the road.
And, though bubbles on the surface of the largest of the sinkholes indicated a rapid flow into the aquifer, the water level rose more than 10 feet between Thursday and Friday afternoon, said Burnett, who visited the site both days.
That is nothing compared to the floods of the early 1960s, the event that inspired the formation of Swiftmud, said McAteer, who once owned Peck Sink and the land around it.
"People who haven't been here a long time can't understand what the heck we're talking about," McAteer said.
John Culbreath owned the sinkhole and 600 acres to the south during the worst of the flooding.
Floodwaters filled the deep basin entirely, he said.
"The water just came in so fast Peck Sink couldn't take it."
The flood then quickly spread over the relatively flat land surrounding the sink.
"I'm 6-foot-1, and it was up to my shoulders on Wiscon Road," Culbreath said.
Every morning, he had to load pails and milk cans on a boat so he could tend to his stranded dairy herd.
More ominously for people living south of Wiscon - or for developers eyeing the property - he said he recently passed through the city and "saw homes built on some of that pasture where we (had seen) mobile homes float out of there. It can happen."
Solving the problems of flood control and pollution will require steps both near the sink and throughout its watershed.
Burnett said new studies must confirm areas that are prone to flooding and the county must work to make sure that development is limited there.
For example, the new hospital site is out of the flood plain, McAteer said, but builders of offices expected to spring up around it must be extremely careful of where they choose to build.
Michael Molligan, spokesman for Swiftmud, said district regulations prevent most runoff problems.
Retention areas hold rainwater and allow it to settle, he said. The district also requires treatment of the "first flush" - the first inch of rain after a dry spell - that carries off high concentrations of contaminants.
But retention areas are designed to compensate for construction - to ensure the problem is no worse after construction than before, McAteer said. They do not eliminate flooding or problems with runoff altogether.
His suggestion is that the county or Swiftmud buy the sink and the surrounding property. That would allow public workers to make sure it does not clog with debris. It would also enable the construction of a series of ponds to collect large amounts of runoff.
That would reduce the possibility of flooding; it would also allow impurities to settle before they flow underground.
The plan sounds good to Alys Brockway, the county employee who coordinates the Groundwater Guardians.
Other alternatives might work as well, she said. The county and Swiftmud need to explore various methods of preventing flooding and groundwater pollution at Peck Sink and choose one of them.
"Certainly the way it's going now is not the proper way for it to be managed," Brockway said. "Our Groundwater Guardians group is very interested in keeping pressure on county officials and state officials to do something about it."
- Dan DeWitt covers the environment, politics and the city of Brooksville. He can be reached at 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com