Swiftmud wants Weeki Wachee Springs to close three of its slides, saying the landing area is too shallow. But company representatives defend the water park's safety.
By JENNIFER LIBERTO
Published September 1, 2004
BROOKSVILLE - The state wants to force Weeki Wachee Springs to shut down three of its five water slides for safety reasons, a move that could paralyze the water park going into one of its biggest, moneymaking holiday weekends.
The Southwest Florida Water Management District, which owns the spring and the surrounding 440 acres, says the slides at Buccaneer Bay are dangerous because the watery landing area in the spring has grown too shallow, causing sliders to injure themselves.
The state has asked a circuit judge to force the water park to close the slides, according to records filed late Monday afternoon.
Officials at the water park, which leases from the state agency, say the slides are safe, as long as sliders enter the water "fanny first," lifting their legs as they exit the slide.
The fate of the water slides will be decided in a court hearing today.
For more than a year now, the state agency has been threatening to close down the water park and demanding repairs to its aging infrastructure.
Weeki Wachee has been plagued by erosion at its spring head for years. Recent summer rains have pushed silt and sand to pile up beneath the "landing zones" of the slides, making the water shallow under the slide dismount.
Also, the spring has yet to be completely replenished since the three-year drought, which ended in 2002, Weeki Wachee Springs attorney Joe Mason said.
The water management district, commonly called Swiftmud, says the park's own complacency has led to the agency's most recent legal action. Swiftmud officials say the erosion problem has existed for months and could have been resolved before the summer season started.
Earlier this year, the Times reported that water park employees were dredging the spring with a backhoe and a front-end loader in the middle of the night - without notifying Swiftmud or getting a state environmental permit.
When Swiftmud's governing board heard of the night dredging, it threatened to close the water park and asked park officials to submit a plan to alleviate the erosion problems. But the agency never received such a plan, Swiftmud spokesman Michael Molligan said.
"The rains came and washed the sand, and now when people are hurt, all of a sudden this is an issue that needs to be dealt with," Molligan said. "It could have been dealt with all year long."
Mason said the dredging that occurred in February had nothing to do with this soon-to-be-requested dredging, which is intended to deepen the slide area. He said earlier digging was to shore up the beach, which had eroded into the water.
"The problem is similar in that the missing sand from the beach might be the same sand in the (slide) catch area, but the reason for needing to move the sand is entirely different," Mason said.
Swiftmud employees recorded the depth of the water in the slide landing area last Thursday as low as 22 inches, according to court records. Mason said the water is deeper, about 2.5 feet - 30 inches.
A teenager recently injured an ankle, either by spraining or fracturing it, while coming off the slide into the shallow water, Mason said.
Doreen Greenstein of Spring Hill told the Times on Tuesday that she tore ligaments in her foot while sliding down a water slide on July 11, in an accident exacerbated when she landed in the shallow water on her knees. She complained to park officials but has not filed a lawsuit about the incident.
Meanwhile, water park marketing director John Athanason disagrees with Swiftmud about the safety issues and insists the slides are safe and "perfectly fine."
"If we felt the slides are not safe, we'd be the first ones to close the slides down," said Athanason who added that Labor Day is among the park's biggest weekends. "It would be devastating, because it's the last hooray of summer. The mermaids are the tradition of the park, but the water park is the revenue stream."
The water park and its slides are scheduled for a routine inspection by the the Department of Agriculture on Friday.
