Cavers make novel case against homes

They say building near World Woods Golf Course would disturb fragile cave deposits formed drip by drip.

By DAN DeWITT
Published December 14, 2004

BROOKSVILLE - A developer wants to build 1,680 houses near the World Woods Golf Course, rated one of the best in the county.

But cavers say the development would be above the most spectacular dry cave in the state.

"There's nothing else like it in Florida," said Tom Turner, of the Tampa Bay Area Grotto, a local caving organization.

He spoke Monday at a meeting of the county Planning and Zoning Commission, where the developer, WCI Communities, submitted a proposal to change the county comprehensive plan that would allow the development.

The houses would be built on land owned by World Woods, which received permission to build 660 resort houses on the property when it was developed a decade ago.

The current proposal would increase that number by 1,020.

The planning commissioners voted unanimously to forward WCI's request to the County Commission with the recommendation that it be granted. The commission will consider it next month. To pass, it must also receive the approval of the state Department of Community Affairs.

The cavers who spoke asked the commissioners to consider that the cave is a natural treasure.

"We're finding features in this cave we have not found in any other," said Robert Brooks, the grotto member who discovered the cave two years ago; the cave's opening has since been barred with a locked gate.

Shark teeth have been found protruding from the wall, left from the time when this part of Florida was under the ocean. Brooks showed photographs of stalactites and clusters of corkscrew-shaped calcite deposits called helictites.

"Helictites even 4 inches long are rare," Turner told the planning commission. "We have bushes of them in this cave more than 12 inches long."

Stan Cooke, the director of golf at World Woods, said attendance at the course had suffered because of a lack of good housing at the club.

Golfers willing to pay to play the course "do not want to stay at 2-star hotels," Cooke said.

Jim King, a county planner, said the comprehensive plan change should be allowed because the infrastructure can support it and because it fits with existing or planned development nearby.

The entrance to World Woods is on a four-lane section of U.S. 98 about a half-mile away from the Suncoast Parkway; water and sewer lines that will be extended to serve one of the nearby developments, Seville, could also serve these new houses.

Seville, which has the right to build 3,000 houses, is just to the west of World Woods; another large residential development, Sugarmill Woods, is just to the north.

The planners also stipulated that the cave be studied by the Florida Geological Survey and that the development will only be allowed if it does not damage the cave.

But almost any development will harm the cave, because of the delicacy of the formations, Brooks said. These are formed by water that seeps in through the limestone, Brooks said, and the formations are still wet, meaning they are still growing.

Paving or moving earth can easily change the direction of the water flow; the formations can also be altered by fertilizers or other chemicals in the water. And the new development would add to the number of potential visitors to the cave and its fragile formations.

"You can look at them cross-eyed and they'll break," another grotto member, Dan Staley, said last year.

- Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or 352 754-6116.

[Last modified December 14, 2004, 00:30:22]