Quote:
Originally Posted by janmcn
I am not a geologist, only an observationist. There seems to be a direct correlation between pumping large amounts of water out of the ground and sinkholes. For instance, when there are hard freezes in Polk county and sprinklers are being run several nights in a row to protect the strawberry plants, then hundreds of sinkholes develop shortly thereafter.
Quoting from Tampa Bay Times: "Heavy rains, massive pumping of groundwater and other factors can speed sinkhole formation, but Florida's Swiss-cheese geology and sandy soil have remained the same for eons. Thus no natural events explain the explosion in sinkhole claims in the past five years".
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I've read that most of The Villages' potable water supply comes from the Florida aquifer, and that the aquifer level is being depleted to the point where it will no longer be a viable source in the near future. The Villages does use reclaimed and "grey water" for irrigation in some area, but the fact remains that there may be a water crisis in the future. And that will require using river water which will need to be piped in where available and heavily processed. When you look at it, the land that The Villages is built on only needed to support cattle and horses in the past. Now we have dense development and loads of irrigation needs. And there is more on the way. Is there enough water available to support the build-out Villages in the future? As we pump out the aquifer, can we expect more large sinkholes?