14A - Savannah News-Press • S|m<toy, February 14,1993 * * * *
Sinkhole Plays Games With South Georgia Lake]
Morris News Servfc*
Fishing Club Finds Nature A Tough Yet Fickle Foe
LAKE PARK, Ga. - Members of
the Ocean Pond Fishing Club in
Lowndes County, Ga., want their
lake back.
Mother Nature has other ideas.
In October, a sinkhole opened in
pristine 800-acre Ocean Pond.
After 90 years of the club's nurturing of the lake - keeping the public out and preserving a picturesque
setting of moss-draped oaks and still
waters untouched by high-powered
motorboats - Ocean Pond began to
shrink.
Club members didn't take long to
realize that the soft limestone under
Ocean Pond was shifting. A sinkhole
had opened and began stealing the
In December, the lake started on the sinkhole problem. He started
filling again with water slowly, re- a two-month battle between man
and nature.
gardless of club members' efforts.
First, the dub used dirt and mud
The ordeal began Oct. 11, when
11-year lake resident and club mem- to reconstruct the natural wall that
ber Becky Yorke had just finished once divided the two sections of
Ocean Pond.
from
washing dishes.
Next, club members hired Dean
"At noon .. ., my water was as
clear as it could be," she said. 'Ten Hileman, a local dive shop employminutes later, I turned on the faucet, ee, to venture to the bottom.
"I found a constantly changing
and black, oily goo starting pouring
landscape. I kept knocking the sides
out."
The sinkhole, sucking 30 million in to try and plug it up," Hileman
to
The club wouldn't say exactly gallons of water daily from the lake, said.
Six openings, the largest about 9
how much money was spent, but first drained the well under Ms.
5 feet, were grouoed closely on
whatever the amount, Mother Na- Yorke's home.
ture wanted the lake saved on her
Herb Wyatt, an aquatic biologist
At one point, Hileman said, he
terms.
hired by the club, acted as adviser
By JUDY SCHRAMM
lake's waters from club owners.
The ISO-member fishing club's
board of directors decided it wasn't
going to sit back and get robbed
without a fight.
From building a dam - sectioning off the smaller, 50-acre portion
of Ocean Pond - to sending a diver
into the murky hole with materials
to plug the earth, club members
spent "quite a bit" of money on the
problem, said club president Converse Bright.
Caldwells, 2 Picadilly Square
I" Open 10:OO A.M. til 6:00 P.M.
was unable to find a grip on any solid material, and the water sucked
him down rapidly.
With the safety rope tied around
his waist untied, he said he threw
down his flashlight, grabbed a knife
his ankle holster and - plunging it into the muddy walls climbed his way out.
After the initial dive, Hileman
was
sent back into the waters. Bach
day for about a week, he dumped organic material into the hole, hoping
plug it—
"You'd throw blocks and you
could hear them crashing down
how far down it was." He
Daufuskie
Continued From Page 1A
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atee-eSecsjnore computers per student than any other school in Beaufort County.
The Mary Fields Elementary
schoolhouse, though, is running out
of time. The facility is old, expensive
to maintain and too small for the
students' needs, said William Rentz,
director of Beaufort County school
district operations.
On the drawing board is a new elementary school to serve the island's youngsters. The school board
is scheduled to hear final presentations on the project Feb. 23 and
could give the financial go-ahead
March 9, allowing the district to
start construction this spring and
open the school possibly by Christmas, Rentz said.
No bridge links Daufuskie to the
mainland. Until the early 1980s the
island was populated by only 60 people, most of them blacks who had
lived on Daufuskie for generations
and survived by farming, fishing
and working jobs at Hilton Head Island.
Now, exclusive resort communities such as Mel rose and Haig Point
Plantation offer million-dollar
homes and top-ranked golf courses
on Daufuskie, and the island's population is about 200,75 percent white.
The first white child attended
Mary Fields Elementary in 1981. Today there are 11 white and four
black students, mirroring the
changes in the island's adult population.
school district's plan for the
new elementary school shows a
4,000-square-foot facility with two
extra-large classrooms, each about
1,000 square feet. There, instead of
keeping to strict grade-level instrucifon~ students of different ages will
be blended into teaming groups for
daily lessons.
^ School district projections show
about the same number of elementary students attending the Daufuskie
school in the coming two to four
years, but the new school will be
built to accommodate upjto 40 children..
About a dozen other elementary-
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Continued From Page 1A
We TV is willing to give you a 24hour channel," he reasoned. "If it's
spprtsJ._it_j»iU^supply you all the
—time; any time. If it's courtroom
dramas you like, you get 24-hour
court TV. Want cartoons? You got a
cartoon jchantieh So WelTre going to
"Tiave a 24-hour military channel."
Whether he succeeds depends
first on what happens with the cable
TV law enacted last year. It limits
cable companies' ability to raise
rates.
"That really threw a monkey
wrench into plans to add additional
channels," said Michael Lustman of
Time-Warner Cable, the second
largest cable company. "It still is up
in the air as to what kind of restrictions the Federal Communications
Commission will put on cable TV operators' ability to raise prices."
A typical day of programming on
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•
mates that on his initial slip, he
traveled 60 feet below the floor tf
Ocean Pond, never coming near anjy
solid ground.
!
Finally, the diving was called
The
guard hired to keep q
rious tourists from visiting the p
vate lake was told to go home.
The smaller 50-acre portion
Ocean Pond was gone. The batt
was over.
"It was right during the season
that speckled perch were biting]"
Ms. Yorke said, peering across the
muddy landscape that once was ia
lake.
!
She said she's sure, however, that
the fish will return.
i
That's because after all was sa|d
and done, the dry section of Ocedn
Pond apparently is filling again with
age children now attend private
schools on Hilton Head Island, Rentz
said, and their parents might decide
to enroll them in the public school
once a new facility is built.
_Tbe district's proposed school
also will feature 2,000 square feet for
a cafeteria and media center that
could handle even more than 40~students in case expansion is required
and classroom additionsare built.
Not only will the schootbe new,
but it will stand on a new location,
Rentz said, because of recent legal
challenges to the school district's
deed to the current Mary Fields Elementary property.
"I have already been looking at
property on Daufuskie. I'm looking
at five or so acres of land for a new
school. We've seen about a dozen
(sites) and now we've narrowed it
down to about four or five that are
suitable," he said.
Among the properties is a nineacre tract on the island's north end,
land that likely will be donated to
the school district fora-new school,
Rentz said. The property is near
Haig Point Plantation's sewage-fa-—
cility, which is positive because that
could allow the new school to tie in
to that wastewater treatment center, he said
The property came to the school
district's attention through a group
called the Daufuskie Island School
Improvement Council, which is
pushing for a different type of new
school for the island,
Their proposal is for a 10,000square-fobt, $800,000 building that
would house an elementary and middle school, as well as a health clinic
and public library. The group, led by
islander John Morris, has put together a package that includes the
land, a resident architect interested
in designing the new school and
community support for the combined services facility.
In a unique approach aimed at
getting the school built in time for a
September 1993 opening, the group
has said it will build the school with
private money and then, sell it to the
Beaufort County school district.
''It's a beautiful idea, but the way
the school district operates, we're
not responsible for those other services and we're not allowed to pay
for (a building to house) them,"
Rentz said.
—
(
the Military Channel might have a
couple of classic war movies in the
morning. There would be news in the
evening and perhaps a Navy show
called "Night Traps" about landing
on carriers. Prime time would be
devoted to World War II history,
battle histories and documentaries.
"Instead of running present-day
public service ads, we would run
ones from the 1930s, 1940s and
1950s," Keeney said. "Old recruiting
ads will come on."
He's also thinking about a poetic
segment on stealth aircraft:
"There'll be no talk, just music. You
just watch it fly for six minutes."
Keeney also intends to cover
breaking military news. For an incident like the Jan. 17 shootdown of an
Iraqi plane by a U.S. F-16, he says,
the Military Channel would go live to
the breaking news and follow the
story all day.
Advertisers, he hopes, will be
drawn to what will be predominantly
male audience.
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