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Apparently the URL I had listed is dynamic and gets changed each day with new stories. Here is another URL for the article as well as the text. Sorry for the confusion (thanks Ken for pointing it out). http://www.tampatrib.com/news/mond100k.htm Trying to unclog Blue Sink=20 By DAVID PEDREIRA of The Tampa Tribune -------------------------------------------------------------------------= ------- (First published Monday May 30, 1999, Tampa Tribune, Florida Metro Section) TAMPA - Scientists hope to unclog one of Tampa's underground arteries of water and add some flow to the Hillsborough River. They named it Blue Sink for a reason - it's water had the hue of a Mediterranean inlet.=20 Today, the once-popular swimming hole is a choked pit of water, home to a few hearty alligators, some beer cans and a lingering bloom of algae. Like many other pristine veins of the Floridan Aquifer, it was corked by trash and debris more than two decades ago.=20 ``This was man's doing,'' said Peter J. Schreuder, an environmental consultant and community activist who wants to restore Blue Sink to its fabled past. ``It's a little like a child putting a plastic bag over the drain in a bathtub.''=20 Schreuder will be one of many scientists and environmentalists trying to unplug that drain this summer - in a mission one Tampa official called an ``underground Indiana Jones plumbing job.''=20 Armed with $50,000 from Tampa and the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the group will try to figure out where Blue Sink is plugged, and how the aquifer wellspring can be restored to its natural state.=20 The obstruction disrupted the natural flow of the Floridan Aquifer, a honeycomb of underground rivers and caves that supplies Tampa with most of its fresh water.=20 Millions of gallons of water that used to flow into Blue Sink from the north and then filter underground toward Sulphur Springs suddenly had nowhere to go. It flooded yards and neighborhoods throughout Forest Hills.=20 The clog also pinched off a supply of water to the Hillsborough River, much like a hardened artery stops the flow of blood to the human heart.=20 Without the flow of water from the Blue Sink system, Sulphur Springs soon became contaminated with bacteria. The Hillsborough River, it is estimated, lost up to 6 million gallons of flow every day.=20 ``By opening this up, the city might stand to gain an additional freshwater supply,'' said Schreuder.=20 But opening the sinkhole won't be an easy task.=20 Longtime residents say Blue Sink, located just west of Florida Avenue and south of Country Club Drive, first plugged in the early 1970s, when a huge storm collapsed a retention pond at an auto dealership on Florida Avenue.=20 The berm, and perhaps an industrial trash bin, fell into the sinkhole, corking it like a champagne bottle.=20 City engineers were able to clear it soon after, but the spring system fouled again in the 1980s, when Tampa was building a sewer substation and silt filled with limestone slurry poured into the sinkhole opening.=20 =46inding just where Blue Sink is cut off will be a bit like finding a pebble in a giant pile of rocks, said Ralph Metcalf, director of Tampa's department of sanitary sewers.=20 ``I've spent my life unclogging pipes, and I just have no idea how they are going to deal with this,'' Metcalf said. ``I don't know if this has ever been done before.''=20 In the first stage of the experiment, scientists plan to bore test wells, use seismic meters and shoot dye into the spring system to track how it flows.=20 If they can locate the obstruction, the sinkhole may be dredged or even pumped dry so construction crews can get at it, said Jeff Vilagos, the city's project engineer.=20 That part of the operation could cost an additional $100,000 or more, state water management officials said.=20 Just the fact that the experiment has reached this stage is a testament to community activism.=20 Sick of constant flooding and angered that a pristine ecosystem was destroyed, a group of Forest Hills residents formed the Blue Sink Coalition in 1995.=20 The small cadre, which included Schreuder and Stanley J. Ewanowski - a retired emeritus professor from the University of Wisconsin - soon ballooned into more than 200 people.=20 While two residents who live near Blue Sink sued Tampa because of incessant flooding, the coalition took a more conservative approach, prodding city and state officials to put together a plan for restoring the spring system.=20 Ewanowski, whose back yard has a spring that feeds into Blue Sink, said new state rules that require Tampa to set a minimum flow level for the Hillsborough River caused the city to take a special interest in the sinkhole this year.=20 Now, hydrologists from the city and the water management district - along with officials from the Department of Environmental Protection and the Sierra Club - have gotten together to support the investigation.=20 Mayor Dick Greco, who used to camp near Blue Sink as a child, said he has nostalgic and practical reasons for wanting to see it restored.=20 ``Blue Sink was a place all the kids used to know,'' said Greco. ``That water will be needed if they can re- open the spring again.''=20 David Pedreira covers government and can be reached at (813) 259-7679 or dpedreira@ta*.co*
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