Article Courtesy
of Smithonian.com By Chris Bodenner
Published August 3, 2018
There are many good reasons why The Villages is known as
“Disney for Seniors.”
The largest retirement community in the world, The Villages
is also one of America’s safest and most leisurely places to
live. Sumter County, populated almost entirely by Villagers, is
62nd among 67 counties in Florida for violent crime—likely
because the median age is 66.6, the oldest of any U.S. county.
The ubiquity of gates, guard booths and mandatory visitor I.D.
cards lends to the low crime. Vehicular deaths are very low,
which makes sense given that Villagers commute in golf carts
more than cars. The Villages is also located in the safest area
of Florida for hurricanes.
But Villagers are increasingly fearful of a growing, surreal
threat: the ground suddenly opening up and swallowing them
whole.
“Everybody is worried,” a 10-year resident of the Village of
Calumet Grove told me this March, pointing to a saucer-sized
hole at his curb where sinkhole specialists drilled to check for
weak spots. A month earlier, in mid-February, seven sinkholes
opened across the street and into a golf course, forming a
zig-zag crack across the facade of one house and causing four
homes to evacuate. One is now condemned. A town hall that week
attracted five times more Villagers than usual. “It’s not a good
time to sell,” the elderly neighbor says, with a weary laugh.
(He asked me not to use his name.)
In contrast to its otherwise serene status, The Villages is a
hotbed of sinkholes. They occur more frequently in Florida than
any other state, though this week we’ve seen them appear on
Maryland roads and even in front of the White House. And The
Villages is smack in the middle of Sinkhole Alley—a swath of
counties in Central Florida that carry the greatest risk. (A
German bakery near The Villages even sells a popular pastry
called the Sinkhole.) |
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A sinkhole from 2012 that swallowed the back of a home at
Shoal Drive in Hudson. At the time the picture was taken, Pasco County
Fire officials said the sinkhole is currently 40 feet wide and 20 feet
deep.
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Typically sinkholes are no more than a headache for property owners, but when
tragedy does strike, it’s the stuff of nightmares. Among the six recorded deaths
from sinkholes in Florida history is Jeffrey Bush, who was sleeping in his
bedroom when a sinkhole sucked him 20 feet underground. His body was never
recovered.
The number of reported
sinkholes in The Villages has spiked in recent years. An
official with The Villages Public Safety Department told the
Orlando Sentinel that residents had reported “several” sinkholes
in 2016, though none affecting homes—an assessment matched by
the archives of Villages-News. Ditto for 2015; in 2014 three
sinkholes affected six homes.
In 2017, by stark contrast, at least 32 sinkholes were reported
by that independent news site. At least eight homes were
affected, plus a country club, a busy intersection, a Lowe’s
home improvement store, and the local American Legion post, the
largest in the world. (The Daily Sun, a large newspaper owned by
The Villages’ developer, reported on none of them except the one
at the busy intersection, only to say the hole was “later
determined not likely” a sinkhole.) In just the first three
months of 2018, at least 11 sinkholes were reported by
Villages-News, affecting eight homes—all before sinkhole season
even started, in early spring. Four more sinkholes sprang up
this week.
That there’s such a thing as “sinkhole season,” just as there’s
a “tornado season” and “hurricane season,” speaks to the many
factors that contribute to the threat. Underlying all of them is
the fact that Florida is built on a bedrock of carbonate,
primarily limestone. That rock dissolves relatively easily in
rainwater, which becomes acidic as it seeps through the soil.
The resulting terrain, called “karst,” is honeycombed with
cavities. When a cavity becomes too big to support its ceiling,
it suddenly gives way, collapsing the clay and sand above to
leave a cavernous hole at the surface. |
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Golf carts parked along main street in The Villages
retirement community in Central Florida.
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The main trigger for sinkholes is water—too much of it, or too little. The
normally moist soil of Florida has a stabilizing effect on karst. But during a
drought, cavities that were supported by groundwater empty out and become
unstable. During a heavy rainstorm, the weight of pooled water can strain the
soil, and the sudden influx of groundwater can wash out cavities. Central
Florida was in a severe drought at the beginning of 2017, followed by the
intense rainfall of Hurricane Irma that hit The Villages in September—and a
deluge after a drought is the optimal condition for a sinkhole outbreak.
But those major events from Mother Nature in 2017 don’t account for the spate of
sinkholes this year already. The weather in Sumter County has been pretty
typical. So what’s going on?
Man-made development, it turns out, is the most persistent factor for increased
sinkholes. Earth-moving equipment scrapes away protective layers of soil;
parking lots and paved roads divert rainwater to new infiltration points; the
weight of new buildings presses down on weak spots; buried infrastructure can
lead to leaking pipes; and, perhaps most of all, the pumping of groundwater
disrupts the delicate water table that keeps the karst stable. “Our preliminary
research indicates that the risk of sinkholes is 11 times greater in developed
areas than undeveloped ones,” says George Veni, the executive director of the
National Cave and Karst Research Institute who conducted a field study in
Sinkhole Alley.
And The Villages has been in development overdrive. It was the fastest growing
metropolitan area in the US. four years in a row (2013-16), and it’s still in
the top 10. In his 2008 book Leisureville, journalist Andrew Blechman reported
that The Villages would “finish its build-out—an industry term for the point
when a project is complete—in the very near future,” peaking at “110,000
residents.” Yet a decade later, the population has sped past 125,000. Last year
The Villages reported a 93 percent boom in housing construction and a new
purchase of land that will yield up to 20,000 homes. Another land deal for 8,000
new homes is nearing completion.
Those new homes will bring more golf courses, and The Villages already has 49 of
them (#2 per capita among all U.S. counties). The retention ponds built on those
courses can leak into the karst and trigger sinkholes. Irrigating those 49
courses and the tens of thousands of lawns in The Villages is also a significant
risk factor. In his 2016 book Oh, Florida, veteran reporter Craig Pittman
reveals how his friend who worked at the Daily Sun said the staff was never to
write two things: 1) anything complimentary of Barack Obama, and 2) “The
numerous sinkholes that open up because of all the water being pumped from the
aquifer to keep lawns and golf courses green.”
In a scathing column, Orlando Sentinel’s Lauren Ritchie notes how the fledgling
community in 1991 had a water permit to use 65 millions gallons a year, but by
2017 that rate reached “a stunning 12.4 billion gallons a year.” The local
aquifer in Sumter County is also threatened by a controversial plan by a
bottling company to pump nearly a half-million gallons of water a day—and double
that rate during peak months. Despite the protests of Villagers worried that a
falling water table will spur sinkholes, pumping will begin soon.
The Villages shouldn’t be singled out when it comes to sinkholes. Marion and
Lake, the two counties that The Villages pokes into, are #4 and #10,
respectively, on RiskMeter’s 2011 list of the most sinkhole-prone counties in
Florida. Number one is Pasco, which abuts Sumter to the south. Last summer a
260-foot-wide sinkhole yawned underneath a Pasco neighborhood, consuming two
homes and condemning seven more, making it the county’s largest in 30 years.
That massive chasm rivaled the epic Winter Park sinkhole in Orange County—#8 for
RiskMeter, an online tool providing hazard analysis for insurers.
Citrus, directly to the west of Sumter, is both #6 for RiskMeter and the fourth
“grayest” county in the U.S., based on the percentage of residents over age 65.
Pasco and Marion are also among the top 10 counties nationwide with both a high
concentration and high number of older people.
In Ocala, near The Villages, a sinkhole in a fast-food lot swallowed a car and
forced the elderly couple inside to crawl out. A man simply standing in the
grass in The Villages slipped through a trapdoor of a five-foot hole. In the
Village of Glenbrook, a retired couple found a sinkhole literally on their
doorstep. Another Villager reported a “prowler” to 911 only to discover a dark
void instead. In the nearby city of Apopka, half a couple’s home collapsed and
“nearly 50 years of memories sank with it.”
I spoke with geologist and sinkhole expert David Wilshaw on the same day he was
returning from a trip to The Villages to inspect a suspected sinkhole. It turned
out to be a false alarm—the small depression was caused by a leaking irrigation
line—but the shaken resident told Wilshaw she hadn’t slept the whole night,
afraid the ground would gobble her up. Injuries from sinkholes are rare, but
“perception is everything,” says Wilshaw, “particularly with the elderly
population. They’re also fearful they may lose their best investment”—their
house—“and lose it during their retirement years,” when they’re most vulnerable.
Central to that fear factor is how unpredictable sinkholes are. They usually
form without warning, and it’s difficult to detect weak spots in the ground.
“Drilling exploration holes in The Villages is a challenge,” says Wilshaw,
“since rock will be 5 feet down in some places and 100 feet down if you move 20
feet to the side.” Wilshaw, who runs his own company specializing in assessing
sinkhole risk, is often hired to survey sites using ground penetrating radar (GPR),
which is the best way to detect cavities. But he says many homebuilders “will do
absolutely nothing and instead rely on the end user” to check for cavities,
since Florida law doesn’t require it. “It’s a little bit of the Wild West,” he
says.
Can anything besides GPR help predict sinkholes? NASA technology has shown
potential: Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) detects subtle
changes in ground elevation over time when the sensor is flown repeatedly over
an area susceptible to sinkholes, especially the slow-forming ones called
“cover-subsidence.” When that use for InSAR emerged in 2014, the Florida
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) reached out to NASA for help, but
when I checked in with a DEP spokesperson, she said that’s not happening anytime
soon.
Even when a site is surveyed and deemed safe from sinkholes, one can still form
a few years later, given the precarious nature of karst. “It’s best to just
cross your fingers and buy insurance,” says Wilshaw. But homeowners insurance
only covers “catastrophic ground collapse”—when a sinkhole makes a home
uninhabitable. Any damage just short of that must be covered by sinkhole
insurance, whose deductible in Florida is typically 10 percent of the home’s
value.
“Not all homes qualify for [that] broader coverage, which is admittedly a scary
proposition in Florida,” according to a front-page article in the May 2018 issue
of The Bulletin, published by the Property Owners’ Association (POA) of The
Villages. (The group isn’t affiliated with the developer).
Even when a sinkhole is repaired (“remediated” is the technical term), it will
sometimes reopen. Perhaps the most dramatic sinkhole to ever hit The Villages,
in Buttonwood—just look at this photo—lurched open several months after
remediation began. So did the sinkhole that killed Jeffrey Bush.
Conspicuously absent from RiskMeter’s top 10 list is Sumter County. That 2011
list, though, was based on sinkhole insurance claims, and scads of them were
falsely reported in the years before 2011, when Florida lawmakers overhauled the
abused system. A much better gauge of sinkhole risk followed two years later
(just as The Villages was starting its four-year growth streak): The 2013 Hazard
Mitigation Plan, created by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (DEM),
which assigned Sumter a “medium” risk for sinkholes. Only eight other counties
were given a higher level of risk.
But as DEM acknowledged, that 2013 assessment was “imprecise and poorly
substantiated by available geologic data” because it was primarily based on
citizen reports of sinkholes unverified by geologists. Enter Clint Kromhout of
the Florida Geological Survey: In 2013, he and his team secured more than $1
million in federal funds to travel around Florida verifying those sinkholes and
create a predictive map showing which areas have the most “relative
vulnerability.” Among the many reporters Kromhout spoke to during the three-year
study was Tampa Bay Times’ James L. Rosica, who noted, “The goal for the scale
of the state map is at least the county level, but Kromhout said he hopes they
will be able to get to a neighborhood-by-neighborhood detail.”
Veni, the karst expert I interviewed, calls Kromhout’s 2017 report “the most
detailed, comprehensive analysis of sinkhole risk that I’m aware of.” (Kromhout
declined to be interviewed for this story, as did a representative for The
Villages.) Its long sought-after predictive map was included in the 2018 Hazard
Mitigation Plan that came out in February.
That’s as detailed as the map gets. As the Sinkhole Report states, “Most
importantly, the favorability map is not of sufficient detail to provide site
specific information regarding sinkhole formation.” The Villages is primarily
located in the northern part of Sumter County, which is almost entirely in the
red zone.
How helpful is the Sinkhole Report? “I don’t think it is the prediction model
that some hoped for (it would be very difficult to create one), but it does
advance the science,” says Robert Brinkmann, a geology professor at Hofstra
University who wrote Florida Sinkholes: Science and Policy and owns a house in
Sinkhole Alley.
“The real challenge here is that the state doesn’t really fund much sinkhole
research, particularly since real estate remains one of the driving economic
engines in the state,” Brinkmann adds. “The federal government has not really
funded any significant studies on the topic except for this modest one. Millions
in federal dollars go every year to tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes and
hurricanes, but little if any goes to studying sinkholes. Certainly [the former]
are horrible, but they are one-time dramatic events. Sinkholes are a constant
threat and much of the damage happens slowly over time. The annual property
damage from sinkholes is staggering”—$300 million is a conservative estimate.
That damage could escalate as climate change intensifies. “As sea level rises in
response to climate change, groundwater levels in near-coastal areas will also
rise and result in increased flooding of sinkholes,” predicts Veni. “Studies on
the potential degree of such flooding and its triggering new sinkhole collapses
are just beginning.” He’s in the preliminary stages of just such a study with a
colleague in Florida.
Some Villagers are tempted to throw in the towel. “When we moved [to the Village
of Glenbrook] in 2012 we thought we would be here for the rest of our days,”
wrote a member of the “Talk of the Villages” web forum on March 5 after a
sinkhole forced his neighbors to evacuate, but “now we’re considering moving
again which is the last thing I wanted to do.” (Less than two months later,
another eight families would evacuate their homes when a dozen sinkholes
appeared in an Ocala neighborhood not far from Glenbrook, making national news.)
Another Villager added ominously: “I am dreading when the rainy season
starts”—May 27, on average for the area.
But the rainy season came early this year: On May 20, after a week of persistent
rain, four sinkholes struck Calumet Grove, the Village that suffered seven
sinkholes in February. Thunderstorms are expected to continue thanks to a
sub-tropical storm system forming off the coast. One of the residents forced
from his home in February, 80-year-old Frank Neumann, spoke to Villages-News.
“Prior to Monday’s sinkhole activity, Neumann said he was hoping to have his
home repaired and stay in the neighborhood he’s lived in for 14 years—largely
because of the friendships he and his wife have formed there,” according to the
site. “But as he stood in his front yard looking at the second wave of
destruction to strike his property in 95 days, he said he wasn’t so sure that
remaining in The Villages was a good idea.”
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