TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

SATURDAY DROWNING: Sebring Scrambles To Fill Dredge Hole

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

From Left: Arielle Gilbert, a summer intern, helps Erin McCarta, Lake Management Assistant, measure the depth around a dredge hole with a secchi disk at the City Pier Beach on Tuesday near downtown Sebring.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: June 10, 2008

Updated: 06/10/2008 06:26 pm

SEBRING — When Bobby Clark, 23, drowned at 3 p.m. Saturday, he swam from shallow water into a 12-foot deep dredge hole, diver Preston Colby told city, county and state officials in a meeting Tuesday morning at city hall.

Fire Chief Brad Batz, who was asked to investigate the Lake Jackson incident, said the hole used to be in a no-swim zone several hundred feet from City Pier Beach. The lake has lost so much water from two years of drought, however, the hole is now a few dozen feet from the beach.

The hole was probably dredged in the 1960s to fill a park area behind the Civic Center park, City Manager Bob Hoffman said. "I think it's a man-made hole."

Batz said Clark knew the hole existed.

"He and his friends had crossed three or four times. They had been swimming in it all day," Batz said.
But the last time, Clark got a cramp.

There is a warning sign on the pier, yards away. And there were signs around the hole, but Batz said a police investigator told him that juveniles were accused of throwing the signs in the hole earlier this year.

Colby, who was at the scene Tuesday morning, said the hole is about 100-by-25-feet wide and 12 feet deep. He did not see the warning signs in the hole.

Now What?
On Monday, the beach was cordoned off by police tape. But July 4 is only three weeks away, and the Heartland Triathlon is fast approaching, Hoffman was told. Batz is hoping the county can make signs that can be installed in front of a barrier fence.

"Thousands of people will be there," Hoffman said. "Not all of them will be swimming, but they'll be there."

"You may have to keep people out of there," Ford advised.

Also at the meeting was Lucianne Blair, environmental administrator for submerged lands and environmental resource permitting.

If the city fills in the hole, she was asked, would the Department of Environmental Protection grant an emergency permit?

Blair seemed willing, but the process would take at least two weeks, she said.
She was agreeable to using sand from the boat launch area of Veterans Beach on the northwest side of the lake. New sand could contain vegetation foreign to the lake.

"I'm just looking for the easiest authority I can give you," Blair said.

The boat launch, north of the Veterans swimming area, is so shallow anyway, it's difficult to get the fire department rescue boat in the water, Batz said, so taking sand from Veterans Beach could solve two problems.

There will be one problem, Highlands County lakes manager Clell Ford pointed out. If the sand comes from Veterans Beach, will be difficult to barge it across the shallow lake. And if the wet sand is moved by truck, it will be difficult to get it out to the dredge hole.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT