Residents delighted in recovery of Scott Lake
‘We loved the lake and we knew it would come back.’
LAKELAND — Robin Wickman stood on his wooden dock on a recent afternoon, tossing bread onto the surface of Scott Lake and watching as fish exploded from below to devour it.
Wickman doesn’t take such placid moments for granted. It seems not so long ago when people living along the lake watched in disbelief as fish — not to mention otters and alligators and countless gallons of water — were being swallowed by a yawning crevasse in the lake bed.
That June 2006 event, when a large sinkhole formed near the southern shore, is an unforgettable occurrence for Wickman and others who were living near Scott Lake at the time. The body of water south of Lakeland lost much of its volume within a few days, creating scenes of almost biblical havoc.
In subsequent days, Wickman and other residents explored a lake bottom that had always been obscured by water.
“That was quite an event,” said Wickman, 73. “It was like a new treasure hunt. We’d walk around the lake and found an outboard motor and fishing rods and reels and found a few arrowheads. I found sunken trees and things like that I didn’t know were there.”
Wickman and his neighbors are delighted that such discoveries are no longer available to them. The water level on the 285-acre lake is back to normal, allowing Wickman to return his boat to a dock that for several years had been standing on dry land.
John Prahl, who has lived on Scott Lake with his wife, Carolyn, since the 1970s, said the unusually high rainfall totals of the past few months have pushed the lake slightly above the full mark. The water is now lapping at the underside of the dock behind his home on the north side of the sock-shaped lake.
For several years, Prahl kept his boat and other water vessels at his company’s warehouse because there was no water beneath the dock.
“I tell people it cost me more to mow the lake portion we had than it did the yard for eight or 10 years,” Prahl said. “We probably mowed 300 feet beyond the end of the dock, and it was still a ways from there to the water that first year or two.”
And today?
“We love it now,” Prahl said. “The lake is actually fuller than it ever was before it went dry.”
The most recent survey by the Southwest Florida Water Management District measured Scott Lake’s water surface at 168 feet above sea level, senior hydrologist Don Ellison said. That’s about a foot above the pre-sinkhole level, he said. The lake’s surface level dropped as low as 155 feet above sea level following the 2006 episode, Ellison said.
To put it another way, the lake had a maximum depth of 13 feet before the sinkhole formed, and afterward, Ellison said it consisted of scattered pools only a few feet deep.
It took a decade or so, but the recovery of Scott Lake has been a natural process that Ellison and other experts predicted would occur. Sediment eventually clogged the sinkhole, preventing water from continuing to drain into the Floridan Aquifer, the underground reservoir that fills a vast network of holes in the limestone underlying the entire peninsula.
With the drain clogged, water entering the lake through rainfall raised the water level.
Natural occurrence
Scott Lake, like most lakes in Florida, was created by a sinkhole that later filled with water, Ellison said. The carbonate rock underlying the peninsula is porous and readily dissolved by water, and the topography, known as karst, is prone to sinkholes.
Ellison said the effects of lake-bed sinkholes are most noticeable in water bodies set relatively high above sea level, as Scott Lake. The larger the distance between the lake bottom and the aquifer, the more water can drain out through a sinkhole.
Eventually, the water level settles, Ellison said, and natural processes begin blocking the holes.
“Sediment washes in over time and settles out of the water,” he said. “The organics in the lake will get filtered into the sand and clog up the pores in the sand, and after awhile it will seal itself up a little bit.”
There is no public access to Scott Lake, which is surrounded by some of the area’s most valuable homes, including the mansion owned by Publix Super Markets Vice Chairman of the Board Barney Barnett and his wife, Carol Jenkins Barnett, daughter of the company’s founder.
Dave Curry, who has lived with his wife, Edris, on the lake’s south side since 1975, led residents in exploring possible remedies. The contingent hired a consultant from an engineering company, but it became clear any plan to plug the sinkhole would be logistically and financially unrealistic.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials estimated that 800,000 pounds of fish died after the water surface dropped. As the water returned, Curry rallied neighbors to contribute money toward restocking the lake.
He collected enough money to buy 5,000 fingerling largemouth bass and 10,000 speckled perch to be released into the lake. At this point, he said, the bass have grown to 3 or 4 pounds.
“He’s been the main instigator in getting people to donate the funds to keep the lake alive and healthy and a place where people can fish,” Wickman said. “Some people are catching quite a few bass now. I say, ‘If it wasn’t for my neighbor, you wouldn’t be catching bass now.’” Values rebound
Access to a large lake can greatly enhance the value of a home, and the dramatic shrinking of Scott Lake had a negative impact on the worth of the properties along its former edges.
Wickman recalled that a neighbor sold his house one week before the drainage began. He said the buyers were so disappointed at losing their lakefront status that they sold the home within about a year.
Prahl said some neighbors had their house appraised after the water receded, and one property declined in value by $1 million. He said a friend who owned a lot on the lake and had planned to build a home wound up selling the property at a loss of $150,000.
“There were some deals going down on properties,” Prahl said. “We were committed. We loved the lake and we knew it would come back, but a lot of people were saying it might never fill up again.”
Starting in 2007, all lots bordering Scott Lake had their land values adjusted downward by 25 percent, Polk Property Appraiser Marsha Faux said. Properties one lot removed from the lake got a 10 percent adjustment.
The economic downturn of 2008 through 2012 yielded a negative tax roll, Faux said, and those adjustments were discontinued. Since 2013, the value of all homes around the lake and adjacent neighborhoods has risen as the tax roll has increased, she said. The jump has ranged from 5.27 percent in 2014 to 8.43 percent this year, Faux said.
Kim McKeel, a Realtor with Keller Williams in Lakeland, said the combination of the drainage and the subsequent financial downturn made it difficult to market homes along Scott Lake for several years.
“The slump in the economy certainly didn’t help any property values, but then specifically around the lake it was such a downer to go show properties on Scott Lake and have grass growing under docks,” she said. “That is such a visual representation of such a bad thing.”
Chris McLaughlin, operations principal of Keller Williams Commercial Lakeland, said agents recalculated prices of houses on Scott Lake during the dry years, treating them as if they were landlocked properties in other upscale neighborhoods. That adjustment brought prices down by 25 percent to 30 percent, he said.
But McLaughlin said those properties have fully recovered the decline in value now that the shoreline is again touching backyards. McKeel agreed, pointing to a by-owner sale in May of a house on Terry Lane for $2.85 million.
“It has allowed property owners to use their homes as they intended, which is so nice,” McKeel said. “It will allow for other higher-end transactions around the lake, and I think over the next year or two you’ll start to see other sellers say, ‘Wow, if that one can sell for $2.8 million I wonder what mine will sell for.’ I think it will encourage other sellers to consider jumping in.”
Back on water
Wickman said his neighbors are thrilled that the aquatic lifestyle they enjoyed before 2006 is available to them again. He and his wife enjoy taking their 16-foot boat out on the water in the evenings to fish or simply enjoy the beauty of the view; Prahl said his family had a new dock built about a year ago and he and his wife relish evening trips in their boat to watch the sunset.
There is one new negative remnant of the dry period. Wickman said many nonaquatic trees sprouted on the exposed lake bed, and they died after the water returned. The tops of some submerged trees present a potential hazard for boaters to avoid, he said.
But Prahl said a neighboring family ventures onto the water almost every evening for water-skiing sessions.
Wildlife has also reclaimed its place on and around the lake. On a recent evening, great blue herons, great egrets and black-bellied whistling ducks could be seen.
“Obviously, you don’t buy on the lake unless you want to use it,” McKeel said. “I think the benefit has been twofold — the economical benefit and also the community benefit of being able to use this treasure that they have.”