TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Recent Rains Damage AP Boat Ramps

ADVERTISEMENT

By DOUG CARMAN

Highlands Today

Published: July 12, 2008

AVON PARK - The recent rains might make it a little easier for you to float a boat in some of the lakes, but for lakes Verona and Lotela, the ways in and out of the lakes have literally been washed away.

Lake Verona's public boat ramp and the Ben Hicks Street ramp on the west side of Lake Lotela crumbled apart over the past month as two storms eroded the soil underneath their concrete slabs, causing them to collapse.
City Human Resources and Risk Manager Kathy Bennett, who is responsible for the insurance on the ramps and in effect is in charge of the repairs, said the city expects a contractor to get the Verona ramp fixed next week after that ramp was washed out early last month. The repairs, covered by the city's insurance, will cost the city $9,000.

She was still getting insurance quotes for the Ben Hicks ramp, which was damaged last week, and could not provide a timeline for that job.

Public Works Coordinator Ted Long blamed the drought for the damaged ramps. The water levels fell well below the ramps to expose the earth underneath them.

The city fixed Lake Tulane's ramp recently, and Long said he believed the repairs will hold if the lake levels go back up.

"What are you going to do, I can't put the water in the lake," Long said. "If the water levels don't drop anymore we'll be OK. Even at Ben Hicks, the water level's come up about 10 inches."

The washout problems are also affecting storm drains. Leon Watson, who lives on Lake Tulane, was worried about a hole full of broken lead pipes in the middle of the beach where a storm drain empties. He had been complaining about the hole since May, he said, as he now sees a dozen kids playing around what he believed was a hazard.

Repairs were under way to fix the problem Friday morning.

From what Watson heard, the drain collects storm runoffs from 35 acres within the city. The hole was almost large enough for small car to park in it Thursday.

Meanwhile, Florida Department of Transportation workers were repairing several drains on Lake Verona. The concrete trays that carry the water from the pipe to the lake, called flumes, were broken in several parts all over the lake.

FDOT Sebring Operations Foreman Tom Wensmann said the storms washed out parts of the flumes, damaging them the same way they damaged the boat ramps. However, Wensmann faulted the drainage structures.

"It's not a real good design," he said. As with the boat ramps, the excess water went out of the flume, into the sand and then underneath the concrete slabs as it washed the dirt away. His crew was installing walls on all of the flumes to help prevent further washouts.

Reporter Doug Carman can be reached at 386-5838 or dcarman@highlandstoday.com

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT