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Litter clogs nature's toilet

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published December 15, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton] Jason Baldwin, 27, begins his descent Thursday into a large sinkhole in the Spring Lake Estates area in a sweep for debris, while his co-worker Nick Martinson, 28, feeds him the line for oxygen.

When John Lombard and fellow scuba divers stumbled on a pickup buried in sediment in a Hernando County sinkhole recently, they moved with caution. Could there be a body inside?

Turns out the pickup was empty. Later the Sheriff's Office traced the abandoned vehicle. The owner had died.

This week, the search for sinkhole trash led Lombard and the dive team to Spring Lake Estates, a New Port Richey neighborhood with a sizable sinkhole that sits like a bowl of soup with parsley and chives floating on the surface.

Looking at the murky water, there was no telling what surprises they might find this time. You wouldn't toss trash into your drinking water, or pour engine oil into your well, but that is essentially what happens when people dump junk down a sinkhole.

These aren't sinkholes that appear mysteriously overnight and cause homeowners and insurance companies heartburn. They are nature's flush toilet.

They collect the fertilizers, metals, oils and other stuff from roads and lawns. It all ends up in the aquifer, the underground river that is the primary source of drinking water for all Floridians.

Mindless litterbugs view the holes as convenient places to get rid of loads of junk. Enter Chris Zajac of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, whose job it is to clean up sinkholes in Pasco, Hernando, Citrus and Marion counties.

Of the nearly 80 sinkholes his crew has found in the past year, more than half were pretty clean. But last month, they found a dry sinkhole near Crews Lake in Pasco County stuffed with 68 tons of debris, including 16 tons of tires. That's a lot of rubber. A search of Kass Sink in Spring Hill produced 17 Winn-Dixie shopping carts. That bounty was too late to save the store; it went out of business.

But there is some encouraging news. Most of the debris seems to have been dumped years ago, which suggests that perhaps environmental education is working.

That's how Zajac came to hear from Richard Feagley about the Spring Lake Estates sinkhole. Feagley, who works for Pasco mosquito control, had removed truckloads of debris from the sink over the past decade.

On Wednesday morning, with Zajac on hand, Lombard and two other divers from Dive Tech International maneuvered a remote camera below the murky surface. In a day's search, they found PVC pipes and assorted trash, nothing major. That was good news. Now they're looking for the next trashy sinkhole. If you know where it is, Zajac would like to hear from you. He's at 800 423-1476.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at (813) 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 15, 2006, 07:13:46]