Madfloridian's Journal - More on the lake that dried up. What the owners did in the 70s.

I wrote about this dried up lake previously. It has been closed off to the public for many years.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/...

But I did not know about this 70s event and had a modicum of sympathy. What they are going to try to do again now, which of course they will have to get state permission to do, is just overboard for a private lake. I saw red when I read this article. I had no idea all this was going on then. I had sympathy, but after reading this I lost it...at least for today.

They tapped into other water resources, they bought their own pump which ran 24 hours a day until they pumped their lake back again. I will fight them if they want to do this again. Our Florida underground system is too fragile to do this for a private lake that has now drained for the second time.

http://theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...

Repair of Scott Lake May Use Old Remedy

Homeowners pumped well water into the lake after it was drained in the 1970s.

LAKELAND -- Scott Lake has sprung a leak, actually several leaks, and all the water has disappeared down what could be as many as four sinkholes. More than 30 years ago, homeowners on the lake faced a similar dilemma when the water mysteriously disappeared.

No one's sure of the exact date or why the water went away. Curry said he thinks it was sometime in 1974, but other residents said it could have been a year or two earlier. The Southwest Florida Water Management District could not fix the date, either.

What they did:

Swiftmud cut a small channel from Scott Lake, beneath Old Scott Lake Road, connecting to a nearby water source.

What water source? Another lake?

What else they did:

Rather than wait on Mother Nature, Curry, Miller and other neighbors spurred by the late Bernie Little, the beer distributor, came up with a novel idea to replenish the lake, which never dried up totally.

They split the cost of sinking a well and pumping groundwater into the lake, something that could never happen today without a state water-use permit, engineering studies and lots of time.

I doubt the public will be happy with their getting permission to do this again. But they are very wealthy, influential people, and they just might get it done.

"Swiftmud was not around, or we would not have been able to do it," Miller said."

So was the Southwest Florida Water Management District around then or not. I don't like the sound of the rest of the article, that a huge lake like this for private use only could use our public resources again.