The Dried-Up Lake, Part 3. Their sense of entitlement is showing.

I started to use the word arrogant, but I guess many of them are hurting right now. They think they are entitled to have their lake fixed. This man really made some people mad in this article today. Things are going to heat up, I think.

They are not entitled to have their own private lake, and they are not entitled to use public resources to refill it for the 2nd time. You just don't do things like that with the underground of Florida so sensitive.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006606250370

Businessman, Engineer Heads Effort to Restore Dry Scott Lake



Here's the letter he refers to, there have been many.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060622/NEWS/606220386/1037/EDIT04

Nowhere in the article, sadly, does this man refer to the environmental problems posed by this issue. He simply seems unaware. The attitude of everyone can get rich like me is what is wrong with our country now. This is the attitude that is prevalent among the Young Republicans and other goups now, they allow no room for those who are helpless and disabled.

He indicated they would probably not ask for public money, but then he says this in an offhand way. It shows he has no clue at all.



In other words, it's their lake, no room for parking...it's all settled in his mind.


SCOTT WHEELER/THE LEDGER
A dock on Scott Lake rises above the dry lakebed.

Today I talked to a friend who lives there. Such a different attitude. Her first reaction was that this was twice, you don't try to refill, and it never should have been private in the first place. She said some of her neighbors embarrassed her with their assumption it all belonged to them.

"The Lake is Dry." A whole lake disappears in a Florida city. Picture.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/150

More on the lake that dried up. What the owners did in the 70s.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/152

I guess they now have a park and a large reflecting pool. :evilgrin:

Good grief, do they actually believe that everyone could be rich if they worked hard enough? Or is it just an excuse to look down on others.

"do they actually believe that everyone could be rich if they worked hard enough?"

Whatcha bet a lot of them were born on third base and believe they hit a triple?

"Or is it just an excuse to look down on others."

Maybe it is.

Just move a bunch of rich assholes with senses of entitlement and huge egos to match into a sensitive ecosystem and allow them to declare public land and natural features private.

I now have no ties left to that state now that my pop is gone and his house has been sold. I was never so glad to get away from any place in my life, and that includes the sea of Baptists in NC in the late 60s.

The last day I was there, I decided to stick a toe into the chilly Atlantic for old time's sake (I now live in the desert), so I drove to the beach.

Well, I couldn't get near it. In fact, I never even saw the ocean. There is now a solid wall of high rise condos there with the only access off the street to their enormous lots and parking garages. There is no longer public access, not even a footpath.

I remember the area even 10 years ago as being relatively unspoiled, with a surf shop and some fast food restaurants and a few motels plus a rather nice nature walk.

Now it's all time share yuppies and well heeled retirees who have considered themselves uniquely entitled to the view and will not permit mere mortals to trample upon THEIR beach and screw it up.

I can't believe the state permitted this. Then again, they elected a fucking Bush as governor. Twice.

The story of the Lakeland executives does not surprise me a bit. I just hope pumping water out of the aquifer will cause more sinkholes to open up, swallowing not only that lake but the enormous and pretentious heaps of masonry that surround it. It's the only thing that would get through to that mindset that natural resources can't be owned and that trying to keep the earth from changing is a losing proposition.

Your post expresses a lot of what I feel. I am surprised at how angry I am. Jeb's bunch has let a lot of the environmental protections die, and I guess this is just too much.

your anger is completely justified. When I saw what they'd done to a beautiful public beach, I went ballistic.

I hate to say it, but that state needs another terrible hurricane season, one that trashes those condos and creates enough other havoc that the state starts to look a whole lot less attractive to people hell bent on loving it to death.

But I shouldn't say that. They might move HERE.

I moved from Atlanta to a tiny, slightly seedy and rundown studio apartment in Fernandina Beach, FL. I was right on the beach and absolutely loved it. This was before the developers moved in and at that time was just your typical small Florida town. I was only a short walk away from a small pizza restaurant/bar that had live music, and I used to go buy fresh shrimp right off the boats when they came in at the end of the day - I thought life was damn near perfect.

I haven't been back there in years, but I'm betting it bears no resemblance now to the Fernandina Beach I remember. I don't think I'll ever go back either because I want to remember it as it was, not as I imagine it is now.

Grew up there, left around 15 years ago, thought the move was temporary, hope it still is. I think Bob Graham was governor then...

Can't believe Floridians elected Jeb. Can't believe it when I see Jeb stickers or read about the laws being passed. It used to be such a sensible state.

Now I am a little afraid of moving back..between global warming and rightwing politics, I think it might be painful. Still it calls me.

It may never be that way again. Jeb has gutted the government offices, privatized things that we won't know about until later. He stood there in his last inauguration speech, pointed at the government buildings, and he said his goal was to shut all of them down. He meant it.

more and more people buy into the myth

and i saw a LOT of the mentality mentioned in the story when i used to live in the D.C. area...sadly, it's even been creeping into my beloved hometown of Virginia Beach

The public should not be obliged to use their aquifer to refill it.

Fuck 'em. This is the minimum karmic punishment they should expect for converting public assets to private use.

This is what it all boils down to....



The first man having enclosed a piece of ground saying"this is mine"and found people simple enough to believe him
was the real founder of society.From how many crimes,murders,wastes might anyone have saved now by pulling up the stakes and crying to his fellows....

"Beware of listening to this impostor!!"

You are undone if once you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all and of the Earth to nobody.
To protect private property men accepted laws and governments.They had too many disputes among themselves
to do without arbiters and avarice to go long without masters.All ran headlong into their chains in hopes of securing their liberty.

Discourse on the origins of inequality of mankind ~Rousseau.

with Rousseau? I think so. He misses the basic and all-pervasive instinct of every species on earth - survival. Survival of the fittest is a fact of nature and survival depends on occupying the best territory, claiming it for yourself, and running off interlopers. I wish, being intelligent beings, that we could overcome this tendency and allow ourselves to treat all humanity as one family.

and constantly holler that they should help themselves.

Well these people WANTED the lake privatized, they got what they wanted, now they can fix it themselves without begging the Florida tax payers to bail them out. Why are they going to the government for help, they wanted the government out, they got what they wanted no get out of the taxpayer's pocket!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

points that are owned by the various homeowners associations around this lake, have never been opened to the public? Well, because they wanted it to be private. It has nothing to do with there just not being access. The lake was closed off to the public, via land purchase, and it was willful and deliberate. A basic 15 minute search shows two such points on one side of the lake alone.

That, plus, I find it interesting that Florida is allowing these folks to attempt to make improvements on their land. Considering that this was navigable water, Florida owns the dirt underneath, which these folks are looking to manipulate/improve. Polk County should, at this point, consider an action to obtain an easement to this huge chunk of dirt in their county. Seems pretty simple to me. Then, should they choose to make whatever "repairs" to the lakebed such that this can be a lake again, it would then seem that via this easement, the public now has access and riparian rights to use the lake.

Although I feel some small sympathy for them -- owning a nice lake house is not evil -- they bought on a pre-drained lake, then privatised it (double duh) and they'd better settle for a nice golf course back there. Too bad. Oh well.

Maybe FEMA can fix it. lol

I did not know of it then. Yet I knew people who lived there, drove by there often. Did know know of the previous draining or sinkhole.

So it could be that many who moved there later did not even know. Our real estate people here even sold homes in another lake bed that had dried up, yet I still remember the lake. The people who bought homes in that lake bed (Lake Deeson) were not even aware until the rains came. And I, who grew up swmming at the pavilion there, did not know it had dried up.

It's possible. I think a few, like the owners of Public Markets, the Busch family there, and some other names I saw listed....sort of handle things for everyone without much discussion.

All I remember sometimes about this lake is the day they close it up, and my parents who were avid fishermen could no longer go to their favorite spots. They were so bitter and angry.

"If so, the homeowners must get a permit from the Department of Environmental Protection. And to pump water into the lake from the aquifer below -- which they did in 1974 when lake levels dipped - they would have to secure another permit from Swiftmud."

The lake according to this article might have held as much a billion gallons of water. Not good to pump that from our sensitive aquifer. I am concerned that there was not a word in the paper today about this situation. I hope the pressure was not put on to hush dissension about this. It has been done before on various issues.

This article is from the St. Pete Times.

Your Lake, Your Problem



I think people will not let it go away, but I have seen stranger things happen here. I hope the state agencies have environmental integrity on this.

I love Tom Palmer's common sense attitude. Four paragraphs doesn't do it justice.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060627/COLUMNISTS0503/606270323/1106/NEWS



From the gallery at The Ledger:


RICK RUNION/THE LEDGER
Two men walk across the dry lake bed of Scott Lake in Lakeland on Monday. Worries persist that three remaining sinkholes may open up, further draining the lake.

Access denied.


RICK RUNION/THE LEDGER
Buddy Fussell, left, and Brandon Moran of Polk City look over what remains of Scott Lake in Lakeland on Monday. Recent rains are both a good and a bad thing. While they allow the lake to heal, the extra water makes it more difficult to determine just how bad the problem is, according to Rick Powers, president and CEO of BCI Engineers & Scientists.