Posted on 06/12/2004 6:36:04 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Lake vanishes almost overnightSinkhole drains man-made body of water near St. Louis
09:05 PM CDT on Friday, June 11, 2004
WILDWOOD, Mo. To people around Wildwood, it is nothing but freaky: an entire 23-acre lake vanished in a matter of days, as if someone pulled the plug on a bathtub.
Lake Chesterfield went down a sinkhole this week, leaving homeowners in this affluent St. Louis suburb wondering whether their property values disappeared along with their lakeside views.
"It's real creepy," said Donna Ripp, who lives near what had been Lake Chesterfield. "That lake was 23 acres no small lake. And to wake up one morning, drive by and it's gone?"
What once was an oasis for waterfowl and sailboats was nothing but a muddy, crackled pit outlined by rotting fish.
The sight had 74-year-old George English scratching his head.
"It's disheartening, getting out on your deck and seeing this," he said as he stood next to wife, Betty, and the "lakeside" condominium they bought in 1996 for its view. "One day it's a beautiful lake and now, bingo, it's gone."
Some residents said they noticed that the lake, after being swelled by torrential rains weeks earlier, began falling last weekend. The Englishes said they noticed the drop-off Monday.
By Wednesday, the man-made lake normally seven to 10 feet deep in spots had been reduced to a mucky, stinky mess.
David Taylor, a geologist who inspected the lake bed Wednesday, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the sinkhole was formed when water eroded the limestone deep underground and created pockets in the rock. The sinkhole was "like a ticking time bomb."
The lake and surrounding housing development date to the late 1980s. The development now includes more than 670 condominiums and houses, about one-tenth of them bordering the lake.
Because the lake is private property, the subdivision's residents will have to cover the cost of fixing it, probably through special property assessments. Mr. English expects it to cost $1,000 a household.
It is a price Mr. English said he is willing to pay. He just wants the unsightly pit gone, either by refilling it with water or dumping enormous amounts of dirt into it to create green space or usable land.
"I think it'll come back again," he said. "You have to hope they can fix it."
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/061204dnnatsinkhole.29cc.html
Yes Virginia, gravity sucks.
Checked out the worldwide quakes at that site. Big one in Kamchatka last week. I remember that region from Risk...
Good place to search for some used lures...
Uh.. no. Check your calendar.
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.
Yet another victim of Global Warming and Republican heartlessness...
If only we had signed Kyoto!
Ricki don't lose that number
Oh, Ricky, you're so fine . . . uh, wait. That's Mickey. Never mind.
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?
The officials said something about the lake emptying into a cavern underneath. Wouldn't shock me.
There is a new lake in China.
I do feel sorry for those folks. Seriously.
That was one really big bath tub.
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.
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