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Scott writes: > I just read the article about the King/Stone plan at Wakulla in > the new AquaCorps issue. I cannot believe they actually want to > drill a huge hole into the cave for their habitat. F___ THAT! > If they ever get close to that being a reality, the cavers/divers > on these lists that truly believe in conservation need to band > together and write every agency we can think of to get it > stopped. I definitely want to put on the gloves to stop that. I > don't know what I can do, but I just can't believe they want to > do that. If Mother Nature wanted it that easy, she would have > added another sinkhole. Whatever happened to conservation? Does > it stop when they can't get what they want? Keep them out of > Wakulla if they can't "leave nothing but bubbles"! Scott, I just finished reading the article a short while ago. I'm still sitting here in shock of what I read. It's shocking to me that ANYONE who is affiliated with any grotto of the NSS would even suggest doing something like this. It's absolutely ridiculous. Dragging the barge into the basin so they can have their habitat is a little nuts too. You want to talk about what sort of havoc this would play on the environment?!? As a matter of fact the last two times I've helped WKPP at Wakulla all cars have been parked in the parking lot across from the resort so as not to disturb the majestic view of the spring. I wonder what sort of view that would be with a barge sitting in the water there. At any rate, I really could not believe some of the things I read. I'm going to summarize briefly for those without AquaCorps. Bill Stone & Jim King want to get back into Wakulla. They want to do a "Wakulla 2". They want to use rebreathers to get further into the system. In order to facilitate that, they initially wanted to drill a hole 2000' from the mouth of the cave. This hole would be 10' in diameter, 300' deep. It would be a shaft directly into the system so the divers could enter and exit from there. The idea of the hole was nixed by the Florida DEP for environmental impact concerns (what concerns might that be?). So, the other idea was to put a barge with a habitat in the basin of the spring. Unfortunatly the Wakulla river is too shallow to bring a barge this size up, so the only two options are air lift it, or drag it over the ground. Now here's where it gets good. These guys want to do saturation diving out of this habitat. Do 5 hour trips per team, a total of three teams. Since the habitat would be at 120' because of the configuration of the basin, when finishing a dive they were planning on doing their deco until the 180' stop was finished, then blowing the 170-120' stops and shooting up to the habitat where they would then recompress themselves to 180' once inside the habitat. Two things really bother me about this whole plan. 1) What about ecology? Does anyone not remember the spelean code of conduct? At least two of the people mentioned in the article I used to have some respect for. One of them is even well known for his conservation message, yet what kind of message is drilling a 10' hole in the ground? 2) They seem very serious about doing this. They're estimating the costs of the project to be between $200,000- $300,000 (tack on another half mil. if they get the hole). If they want to spend that kind of money on a serious Wakulla project, they should talk to George. I'm sure for $500,000 enough stage bottles to get 2000' from the cave entrance could be found. Ken -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Ken Sallot "I'm not flying. I'm falling, with style" CIRCA - Buzz Lightyear kens@uf*.ed* (352) 392-2007 http://grove.ufl.edu/~ken -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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