Lake vanishes almost overnight; sinkhole drains man-made body of water near St. Louis

Associated Press ^ | June 11, 2004 | Associated Press Staff

[mad_as_he$$]

Yes Virginia, gravity sucks.

[Koblenz]

Checked out the worldwide quakes at that site. Big one in Kamchatka last week. I remember that region from Risk...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Good place to search for some used lures...

[DonaldDuke]

OH MY GOD!!!!!! IT'S THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

Uh.. no. Check your calendar.

[BizzeeMom]

Many years ago, I lived in this area, and IIRC the builder(Mason Homes, long defunct) that first developed Lake Chesterfield experienced emptying problems with this lake in the early stages.

[pabianice]

Yet another victim of Global Warming and Republican heartlessness...

[gitmo]

If only we had signed Kyoto!

[Diddle E. Squat]

Ricki don't lose that number

[Xenalyte]

Oh, Ricky, you're so fine . . . uh, wait. That's Mickey. Never mind.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Yeah, some builders get away with a lot when they grease the palms of certain officials. We had flooding in N. Texas this week, and they showed pictures of lakeside homes with 2 feet of water in it at a time when just 3 feet of water was going over the spillway. How the heck were homes allowed to be built at just 1 foot over the spillway line?

[Desdemona]

The officials said something about the lake emptying into a cavern underneath. Wouldn't shock me.

[Diddle E. Squat]

I keep wondering WHERE all the water WENT.

There is a new lake in China.

[Missouri]

We have some sinkholes up here in North St. Louis County. I heard that they were caused by a void when Laclede Gas sucked the natural gas up. Sooner or later the pocket collapses thus creating a sink hole.

[Missouri]

We have some sinkholes up here in North St. Louis County. I heard that they were caused by a void when Laclede Gas sucked the natural gas up. Sooner or later the pocket collapses thus creating a sink hole.

[Desdemona]

I'm not knocking free enterprise, but I'm wondering what kind of environmental studies were done by the builders who developed the lake and the surrounding area.

Wildwood is way west county. Deep thinking isn't a hobby out there. There was a lot of available land and they built on it and then incorporated a town. Sort of like where I live only that was done 100 years ago. Now we're considered city.

[LibKill]

AAAAIIEEEEEEEEEEEE! Run away! Run fast! Run far!

I do feel sorry for those folks. Seriously.

[Desdemona]

I keep wondering WHERE all the water WENT. A 10 acre lake is a LOT of water; did it come back to the surface nearby?

I heard on the news that it was draining into an underground cavern. As to the surface, all natural bodies of water here eventually make they're way to the big rivers (Missouri and Mississippi) and good luck finding water from that lake in those two rivers. Out in Wildwood, it would go to the Missouri first.

[Dark Wing]

That was one really big bath tub.

[Desdemona]

We have some sinkholes up here in North St. Louis County. I heard that they were caused by a void when Laclede Gas sucked the natural gas up. Sooner or later the pocket collapses thus creating a sink hole.

Interesting. There are a lot of suppumps downtown to drain the springs that used to feed Chouteau's Pond.

[piasa]

Down here in FL, we fill 'em with concrete.

Works pretty good...

Florida sinks tend to spread pretty wide due to the crumbly nature of the limestone down here [lots of coral nodules and voids], the sandy soils on top, and high water tables. Missouri karst tends to be much more uniform, stable and solid, so holes usually rather limited in diameter. Missouri topsoils are often clay with moderate sand content and in some areas, are composed ofa layer of loess which is interesting stuff as it claylike and made of flakes rather than round particles. It's a soil which was formed of windblown particles from further west- evidently at one time there were enormous dust storms that blew this material in.

Anyway, if you tried to cut a trench through sand it would slump at an angle, say 45% slope and partly fill in the hole, but loess barely slumps at all since the flaks stay flat and level upon each other. A trench through otherwise undistrubed loess stays neat and vertical, even when it rains, though the top surface if exposed would be slick as snot on a doorknob. That's probably why Florida sinkholes over comparable voids seem to spread so far while Missouri sinks are more narrow.