by kelly » Oct 16, 2005 8:36 pm
[quote="Buford Pruitt"]Ken et al.,
Jim Taylor, Steve O and I are quite aware of the Alachua Wal-Mart situation and are looking into it. We are currently in a data-gathering mode, trying to ascertain just exactly what, if any, potential adverse impacts could occur to Mill Creek Cave from the proposed development. I spent 30 years as an environmental consultant in Florida, and thus am VERY familiar with the permit and review processes that WM will have to go through to construct this store. Along with Levy County residents, including NSS members, I fought the application for the Manatee Limestone Pit, which had the potential to destroy the water quality and recreational values of Manatee Springs; that set of permits was rejected.
The reason I have not responded to this thread before now is that I have a lot of stuff to do these days, and thus am not spending much time reading the NSS discussion board. I have a choice: I can work on the Mill Creek WM situation (and the Florida Cave Survey, and the FSS, and yet another NSS preserve controversy that you may not have heard of), or I can wander around the NSS discussion board. I am sure you will all understand that Steve, Jim and I need to focus right now on assessing the situation.
The portion of the cave that is under the WM site, the Syphon Tunnel, is under at least 158 ft of water according to the 1976 Exley map. Assuming the water table is at the rock-clastics interface and that the interface is 30 ft deep, then there is 128 ft of rock above the ceiling of the Syphon Tunnel. We can get updated maps of the cave, updated info on the thickness of the clastics overlying the rock, and updated water table elevation data, but regardless, we are likely to find that there is a LOT of limestone between the cave and the Wal-Mart. I’m not a geotechnical engineer or geologist, but I am fairly sure that much rock will support the store above the cave.
Of course, there could be clastics-plugged sinkholes that might communicate between the cave and the WM under the right (wrong) situations, and we will need to find that out. Are there any geotechs or geologists out there who might be able to help us on this issue?
I have been told that WM intends to sell gasoline from that store, so we also need to learn what protection DEP will require WM to install in order to protect ground waters from petroleum product spills or leakages. I didn’t “doâ€