Ocala Wetland Recharge Park closed to repair sinkhole

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OCALA, Fla. (WCJB) - The Ocala Wetland Recharge Park is dealing with another sinkhole.

In 2019 the opening of several sinkholes at the park delayed the grand opening.

Relayed story: Sinkholes postpone opening of Ocala Wetland Groundwater Recharge Park

This most recent sinkhole opened up last Tuesday.

Due to this sinkhole, 1.2 million gallons of public access reuse water was drained into the aquifer, but officials said that the loss of water and the sinkhole, are not a danger to the public.

Ocala City Officials said this is a normal occurrence associated with a nature area like this one.

“Especially in this area where we have, what they call karst topography, or karst formations. The lime rock formation beneath us in this part of Florida, the layer of soil over top of the actual lime rock is very thin and what happens is water over time will erode the lime rock and if there’s, basically its porous, kind of like Swiss cheese, there’s little caverns under there and if it erodes through a thing section of the ceiling of the cavern it’ll cause a collapse, it’ll erode it away and then everything just comes into it,” Ocala City Engineer and Director of Engineering and Water Resources, Sean Lanier said.

The park closed Monday and will remain closed until Saturday for crews to go in and repair the hole.

“This occurred in the deep zone so it’s not going to interfere with any of the plants that we’ve planted. There was an old inner there that was actually left from the golf course and we’re going to probable remove some of the liner and put down, do some back filling, compaction and then we’re going to put down a little clay layer, liner, and then we’ll be done,” Lanier added.

Related story: New wetland recharge park opens in Ocala

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