Is the apocalypse coming to Apopka?

Floridians are no strangers to bad weather conditions.

No, we don't run from a storm; we adapt and survive. And while getting reimbursed by FEMA or covered by your homeowner's insurance may be a challenge these days, we stand strong in the face of weather's might.

But what about when an engineer hired by the City to advise them on a "sinkhole" at the water reclamation pond off Golden Gem Road opens his presentation by saying this:

"It's hard to imagine, but what you have is a volcano."

Those are the words of Devo Seereeram, PhD, PE of Devo Engineering and Inwood Consulting Engineers. 

A what?

Is Apopka about to experience an apocalypse? Are college kids learning how to defend themselves against zombies starting to make sense? Are Preppers beginning to sound like pragmatic realists?

Seereeram later described the volcano as "innocuous."

"I don't think we'll have to worry about it," he said.

What we do have to worry about is 200 million gallons of water being lost because of the sinkhole... or perhaps a more accurate description by Seereeram.

"It's more like the equivalent of a mine shaft collapse," he said. "It's very different than a sinkhole."

Seereeram told the Apopka City Council at the May 1st meeting that the "mine shaft" collapse at the bottom of a retention pond used to store Apopka's reclaimed water on Golden Gem Road was caused by the pond filling up, and the extra pressure caused the thin layer of soil to collapse into the Floridan aquifer. 

As you might expect, the Council had several questions.

"200 million gallons of water was lost," said Commissioner Alexander Smith. "So, did this water contaminate any of the wells?"

"Not that we can tell," Seereeram said. "You would have had people walking in here already. As far as we can tell, I looked at all the public supply wells around here, and they are deep. So the flow in this zone would be in the upper part of the Ocala limestone, not the deeper part, which goes from 150 to about 400 feet."

"How are you going to try to remediate this?" Commissioner Diane Velazquez asked. 

"The main shaft we need to fix and seal back," he said. "But I'm always cognizant of the concept of economics. Here we have a facility, and it is a lot of money. As a first step, we need to prevent the waste of money. And we need to try and fix it. Now if we can't fix it, then we we need to change it. But I'm not going to suggest a teardown unless a national consultant comes in and says to do that because then we enter the doctrine of economic waste."

"Could you provide a summary or a quick synopsis of exactly what is needed to fix?" Commissioner Nadia Anderson asked.  "Very clear. You said broken concrete and broken rocks, but could you clarify that a little so we can understand exactly what's needed to fix this?"

"Okay, imagine we have a shaft that's 100 feet in diameter and 30 feet deep," he said. "And somehow, it's at the bottom. It has little channels where it can connect and go deeper. You know some channels that are unknown. What we don't want to do is to go in there and try to pump grout or concrete because it's going to enter that channel and run away from us. They could spend millions of dollars grouting. But I don't have any stock in any cement company. So I'm not going to suggest that. What we do is we go to the bottom, we put big rocks, and for starters, that way, we know we have created a lock at the bottom with the big rocks... so we're building a helmet over it. But the inside, we are not trying to seal that because it's not possible to seal it."

"Would it make sense, or would it be more cost-effective if we were to carve out the breached section and no longer use it?" Commissioner Nick Nesta asked. "Make that the new berm?

"I think we need to do a cost-benefit," said Seereeram. "I don't know what commitments the City has to allocate money and to St. John's to storage. But certainly, I like that idea."

Seereeram also cautioned that this was an inevitable outcome because of the original design.

"The mine shaft we need to fix," he said. "To me, it was not unexpected. There was not enough thought process about the soil, the lands, and where we are. But then again, I'm an expert at this. I've done over 100 litigated cases in the state of Florida like this."

Seereeram did not estimate the costs to cure, but on April 19th, Mayor Bryan Nelson told Channel 9 News that the expected repair cost would be between $200,000 and $400,000, depending on what the engineering firm recommends.