Same old story. Same problem that has gone on for years. With the extended deep freezes here in Florida last year, the sinkhole problem came to the attention of folks who had not paid attention before. We talked to a man with tears in his eyes as he left his job and headed home to move his family out of their home by order of the water management. A sinkhole was in his yard, encroaching on the house...and water management said that the strawberry growers would start pumping again that night. They said get out.
Farmers brace for freeze, neighbors brace for sinkholes.There is a video at the link for the local ABC affiliate.
PLANT CITY, Fla. - When the cold weather rolls in and farmers pump ground water to protect their crops from frost, Austin Creel gets nervous. Four sinkholes opened in his neighborhood last year around this time.
"Here's where it really started," said Creel, pointing to a pipe on the side of his Plant City home in the Walden Lake subdivision. "Not until after the fact, when really they started pumping did I start to have a problem," he told ABC Action News. "Walked in a back bedroom to get a package and walked into water so, busted a main water line," he went on to say.
But the broken water line under his home's foundation was the least of his problems. "I am on a sinkhole, according to the survey," Creel said....Now, one year after unprecedented cold weather and record-low aquifer levels, the homeowner is still mired in a sinkhole lawsuit with his insurance company. And farmers are getting ready to turn on the sprinklers again tonight.
"We're all neighbors," said strawberry farmer David Spivey. He says his well went dry last year too along with many other homeowners in the Plant City and Dover area.
But the farmers get to keep pumping, while their neighbors get nervous. After last year you would think some restrictions would have been placed on the pumping. But not yet.
They pumped up to a billion gallons of water a day for long spells last year, lowering the aquifer by 60 feet. But there was nothing done at all.
Plant City area strawberry growers pumped billions of gallons of water daily for 11 days.BROOKSVILLE — BROOKSVILLE — Farmers in Hillsborough and Polk counties pumped nearly 1 billion gallons of water a day out of the aquifer during the 11-day cold snap this month, causing 85 reported sinkholes in the region and about 700 complaints of dried-up or damaged residential wells, according to figures released Tuesday by the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
That 1 billion gallon figure is 16 times the normal average permitted quantity of 60 million gallons a day that the farmers can use. It's 10 times the combined 103 million gallons a day that St. Petersburg and Tampa residents use. It's enough water to fill up more than 15,000 Olympic swimming pools.
Sinkholes: Plant City has declared 11 homes uninhabitable and is watching 35 more. This is the family I referred to above. They lost their nice home.
Sandy says her two adjacent neighbors now share more than her zip code. The massive sinkhole started in their backyards and spread to Sandy's. The city told her neighbors it was no longer safe for them to stay in their homes.
"We are still expecting a week of receiving calls," says Plant City Engineer Brett Gocka.
Gocka says Plant City has already declared 11 homes uninhabitable and are watching 35 more, including Sandy's.
There was an article last year in the Brandon News called Sinkhole Politics, who gets heard.
Sinkhole politicsStrawberry city
Living with misery and anxiety breeds resentment, even in the small town of Plant City, the strawberriest place on Earth. With its berry-bedecked downtown decor, its annual strawberry festival and the crowning of wholesome strawberry queens, the city owes much to its farmers. That's true now more than ever. Many of Plant City's blue-collar industries, long a backbone of this railroad town, have shut down within the past year or so. Unemployment is high.
Although an estimated 30 percent of Florida's crops have been lost, Campbell said watering by farmers diverted a catastrophe in the strawberry fields - a critical issue in eastern Hillsborough, where many associated industries glean benefits from a successful harvest.
But Plant City residents are starting to grumble that everyone from the mayor to the governor care far more about the farmers than the little guy.
"The truth is, they're getting their campaigns funded, their donations, from the farmers," said Jeff Gray, whose family goes back several generations in Plant City. His well has run dry in four consecutive winters.
The water management for the area was supposed a hearing this week, but they canceled it because of pressure from the strawberry farmers.
Freeze Restrictions on Farmers On HoldCold weather is fast approaching, and the water district wants to avoid a repetition of last winter, when farmers pumped so much water to protect their crops that hundreds of wells dried up. But their solution will have to wait at least another month.
Members of the Southwest Florida Water Management District were set to vote on a set of restrictions on farmers. But the Florida Strawberry Growers Association got a month's reprieve. Growers are particularly worried about a plan to limit the amount of groundwater they could withdraw in the area around Dover. That would prevent a repeat of January, when the water table dropped by 60 feet in some places.
Ted Campbell is the association's executive director.
"We really don't want to shrink the industry, yet we want to protect any collateral damage that may occur," Campbell said. "So the answer is find alternative freeze mitigation, not to restrict annual use permits, and put farms out of business."
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