[manaboutown]

Originally Posted by CaptainHugo

Back about the turn of the Century, my wife and I used to go for Sunday afternoon drives down to Lake Miona. The surrounding countryside was mostly cow pastures, mixed with homes and farms that had been there for decades. Highway 466 was a two-lane road. A few years later, The Villages invasion was taking shape, and when driving on 466 at night, you could see areas on the south side of 466 lit up by lights of backhoes, digging up the cow pastures to make large holes in the ground. One by one, the cow pastures were converted into holes in the ground, that slowly started filling with water. Today, this massive conversion of cow pasture to holes filled with water is called Lake Sumter. Lately, Villagers have been complaining about their ponds going dry; Folks, they are all retention ponds, some with liners to retain water, but a retention pond is designed to collect large amounts of rainwater, and allow it to drain as gravity sees fit. Lake Sumter is nothing more than a very large retention pond that The Villages somehow manages to keep full of water. A large sinkhole could turn this lake back into a large cow pasture free of grass.

This is good historical information. Thank you!