Lake Denton To Open Saturday - Afterall

SEBRING - Highlands County's public access ramp to popular Lake Denton will be reopened at 8 a.m. Saturday.

Public access to this exceptionally clear lake off Memorial Drive has been closed since Sept. 13, when the county commissioners' voted 3-2 to close it due to lakefront homeowners' complaints about traffic and parking congestion and rowdy and offensive behavior.

The county's public access ramp was scheduled to open last Saturday.

Four days before the scheduled opening, though, Frank Kruppa of the county Health Department said the county would have to get a permit to operate a public bathing area if it charged the $25 weekend fees for scuba divers.

Commissioners then canceled the reopening.

On Monday, the health department reversed its position and said the county can reopen public access to Lake Denton with the $25 scuba diving fees on weekends and holidays without complying with regulations for a public swim area.

Public access to Lake Denton, widely considered among the three best freshwater scuba diving sites in Florida, will now be open only eight hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, scuba divers will be charged a $25 fee to enter the lake on the county's 40-foot-wide shell access road to the lake's edge.

Scuba instructors will not have to pay the fee, and anybody will be able to enter the lake for any reason at no charge Mondays through Fridays.

The most restrictive regulation is limiting the number of people who can enter the lake by the county's public access. Commissioners agreed with the advisory committee's recommendation to allow just eight parking spaces.

Thus, the number of people using the lake at any one time will be limited to the number who can arrive there in eight vehicles.

Vicki Pontius, county parks and recreation director, and county Commissioner Don Bates, the non-voting chairman of the advisory committee, said the new regulations for Lake Denton are only a short-term plan for the lake.