{"id":25,"date":"2013-03-18T14:09:11","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T18:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/south-ga-officials-expecting-sinkholes-after-rain-while-nytimes-plays-down-the-risk.html"},"modified":"2013-04-08T22:45:53","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T02:45:53","slug":"south-ga-officials-expecting-sinkholes-after-rain-while-nytimes-plays-down-the-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/south-ga-officials-expecting-sinkholes-after-rain-while-nytimes-plays-down-the-risk.html","title":{"rendered":"South Ga. officials expecting sinkholes after rain while NYTimes plays down the risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSinkholes aren’t just\r\nfor Florida<\/a> anymore: Albany’s got them.\r\nAre sinkholes risky?\r\nYou may think so if one is under your house.\r\nAnd here above the Floridan Aquifer you probably won’t know that\r\nuntil your foundations starts cracking.\r\nMaybe we should do something to prevent the problem,\r\nand to help people who are affected by it.\r\nPerhaps the Lowndes County government till pay attention when\r\nsomebody’s house falls into a sinkhole.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nJim Wallace wrote for WALB 9 March 2013,\r\n\r\nExpect more sinkholes<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nSome sinkholes have opened up in South Georgia since the recent\r\nheavy rains.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAnd engineers and public works experts say they expect more\r\nsinkholes to develop in the coming weeks. It’s just nature at work,\r\nbut it can really cause some problems.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nReally?\r\nDoes “nature at work” include\r\n\r\nsinkholes predictably forming after\r\nmassive water pumping to sprinkle strawberries during a cold snap<\/a>?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe WALB story pooh-poohs the possibility of anything like that Sefner\r\nsinkhole showing up in south Georgia, and then details two Albany sinkholes:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nA sinkhole opened up in Martha Strickland’s backyard on Williams\r\nStreet February 13th, causing a huge oak tree to fall onto her home.\r\nLater that afternoon two large sinkholes opened at Sherwood Baptist\r\nChurch’s Legacy Park off Old Pretoria Road.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nEngineers say based on history we should expect to see more in\r\ncoming weeks. “Very typical for the Albany, Dougherty County area.\r\nWe had a lot of this in 1994 and 1998 if you recall,” said Michael\r\nMcNeal and Engineer for TTL.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nExperts say they have never heard of anything like the Florida\r\nsinkhole situation happening in South Georgia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nReally?\r\nHow about this one\r\n\r\nthat swallowed a Sonic restaurant in Cleveland, GA in 2010<\/a>?\r\nSure, that’s in north Georgia.\r\nBut there have been sinkholes that swallowed houses in south Georgia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“Typically they are not that deep. They typically, the ones I’ve\r\nseen may be 20 or 30 feet deep at the most. Lot of them were\r\nshallower than that,” McNeal said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat sounds deep enough to mess up your house pretty bad.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“No there is no need to panic about it,” Zimmer-Shepherd said. “On\r\nthe other hand if you see the signs of ground that is starting to\r\nslough and subside you do need to pay attention to it.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSigns like\r\n\r\nthat groundscan from VSU that Michael McCormick is holding<\/a>\r\nor\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nthe gaping hold under his garage<\/a>?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nApparently sinkhole concern is high enough\r\n\r\nafter Sefner<\/a>\r\nthat the New York Times thought it had to play down the risks.\r\nMichael Wines wrote for the NYTimes 15 March 2013,\r\n\r\nOne Sinkhole Killed, and Many Others Opened, but Experts Counsel Not to Panic<\/a>, which does at least note that sometimes sinkhole causes are not natural:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nOf course, he noted, there are sinkholes, and then there are\r\nman-made sinkholes. Real sinkholes occur when rain naturally\r\ntransformed into weak carbonic acid eats away particularly\r\nsusceptible underground rock like limestone or gypsum \u2014 also\r\nknown as karst \u2014 creating underground holes.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMan-made sinkholes are made the same way, only quicker. The\r\nLouisiana sinkhole is above a salt dome being mined by a\r\nbrine-making company.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nLimestone like the Floridan Aquifer that underlies\r\nall of Florida and most of south Georgia;\r\nthe aquifer we are all mining for drinking water and irrigation.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nPerhaps we should be concerned, just as we should have been concerned\r\nabout overclearing and too much permeable development before\r\nthe floods of 2009 and this year.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

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