Wal-Mart - NSS Owned Cave Links

Expert warns Wal-Mart site may harm caves

By NATHAN CRABBE
Sun staff writer - www.gainesville.com/
November 26. 2005 6:01AM

ALACHUA - The cattle didn't know what to make of Cindy Butler as she roamed on their pasture Friday listening to headphones attached to a gray disc.

Butler followed the sound of an electronic hum as it grew in intensity, leading her to the edge of a 80-foot-wide depression in the ground. The headphones were picking up the sound from a magnetic device carried by cave divers nearly 200 feet below the surface. Butler will present the findings to Wal-Mart as it moves forward with plans to build a store on the 31-acre property on U.S. 441 near Interstate 75. "I don't have an issue with them building on here - as long as they don't build on the cave," she said.

Butler is a certified cave-diving guide who leads expeditions into the nearby Mill Creek Sink. Mill Creek feeds into the sink, its waters being carried through a series of underground caves that eventually lead six miles away to Hornsby Spring. She said the fragile cave system could be damaged by Wal-Mart - especially a fissure in the rock below the proposed store. Divers brought the magnetic device to the fissure, so Butler could document its location above ground.

That location ended up being a depression in the ground where water is likely soaked into the cave. Building on that spot could cause the cave to collapse, Butler said, blocking the water flow until it floods the area around the sink. "Nobody's looked at what happens when you stuff up this natural drain conduit," she said. "Where's all that water going to go?"

The Alachua City Commission hasn't yet held hearings on the Wal-Mart project. But company officials say the 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter would include groceries, a garden center, a tire and oil-change center and gas pumps. The Suwannee River Water Management District has already issued a permit allowing the proposal to move forward. Cave divers say the district doesn't consider that development in one location can affect a wider area through underground channels

"It's not that any of us are anti-development - it's that we're anti-development in sensitive areas," said Gene Melton, chairman of the cave-diving section of National Speleological Society. Melton joined the group Friday, which included his dive partner and Butler in the pasture tracking the progress of two divers below the surface. The group has been monitoring development above caves across the state, he said, because of the potential to pollute groundwater.

Alachua County's Environmental Protection Department set out to prevent such problems with an August study that poured 20 pounds of nontoxic dye into the Mill Creek Sink. The study found it took 12-15 days for the dye to travel six miles to Hornsby Spring, which feeds the Santa Fe River.

Butler said the sink connects to a cave resembling a subway tunnel as it passes below U.S. 441 before stretching under the Wal-Mart property. From there, the caves are believed to turn west and snake parallel to 441 before reaching the spring.

Butler said she's frustrated with the state's lack of concern for what amounts to a huge underground river. She said she doesn't oppose Wal-Mart's development, she just wants the store to be located away from the cave. "If it was a river above ground they'd be required not to build on it," she said.

Nathan Crabbe can be reached at 352-338-3176 or crabben@gvillesun.com