Lake of troubled waters
Cory Lake started as a borrow pit. Now it's the centerpiece
of a gated community. And the source of continuing controversy.
COURTESY : St. Petersburg Times
Published April 4, 2004
By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER

CORY LAKE ISLES - When environmental regulators in 1985 stumbled upon the pit that developer Gene Thomason had been digging, they couldn't believe their eyes.

The hole's size - 165 acres - made it the largest body of water in New Tampa. The pit disrupted the area's drainage flow, siphoning off enough water to shrivel 20 nearby wetlands. A Hillsborough River tributary named Clay Gully Creek had been obliterated, wiping out a wildlife link that stretched into Pasco County.

State regulators at the time ranked the unauthorized dig as one of Hillsborough County's worst environmental violations of the past 10 years.

"They went wild and dug up the whole world out there," Leslie Schaugaard said in 1988, when she was the enforcement director for the county's Environmental Protection Commission.

In 1988, the state decided on a remedy: a consent order that required Thomason to repair much of the damage and pay a $10,000 fine.

The fine wasn't nearly as stiff as it could have been, and that was the point, state officials say.

"We knew it would cost money to build these corrective actions, so we took that into account with the penalty," said Bill Kutash, who supervised Florida's dredge and fill program in the 1980s. "We want the penalty to sting, but we don't want it to interfere with fixing the problem."

The consent order allowed Thomason, 60, to keep the lake without paying a heftier penalty, a decision that secured the future for his project: Cory Lake Isles, a tropical-themed gated community where many of the homes fetch $500,000 or more.

But recent inspections show that Thomason hasn't complied with what state regulators ordered him to do 16 years ago. According to a July 30, 2003, inspection report that cited "many environmental concerns" by the Southwest Florida Water Management District, Thomason violated at least nine terms in the consent order.

Violations included failing to repair certain wetlands; digging the wrong depth and slopes to other wetlands, making erosion - and the water pollution that comes with it - likely; failing to build or repair silt screens that capture sediment to prevent pollution around other wetlands; diverting wetland water into Cory Lake; and not planting or maintaining the proper vegetation along wetlands to prevent erosion while also creating a vibrant ecosystem.

Another agency, the county's Environmental Protection Commission, said Thomason hasn't fixed all of the violations that its officials discovered in 2002. Those include allowing dirt from construction to seep into neighboring properties.

Thomason said the violations were minor and have since been fixed.

"They're history now," Thomason said. "When you do a development of this size, you're going to get warnings. If you go to Swiftmud and look at any other development that has gone on, you're going to find lots of reports like this."

Swiftmud didn't take any action because the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is responsible for enforcing the consent order.

Eight months after the DEP received Swiftmud's report about environmental violations, the agency has yet to conduct its own inspection at Cory Lake.

"We're still in the process of coordinating a meeting with water management staff," said DEP spokesman Mike Zavosky. "By the end of April we hope to conduct our own field inspection with the consultant from Cory Lake Isles. I can't predict what will happen."

Zavosky said the 1988 consent order didn't require frequent inspections, and the agency's first priority is honoring consent orders that specify when inspections are made. With an area that includes 12 counties, late April was the earliest DEP could inspect Cory Lake Isles.

"That doesn't mean we think this inspection is any less important," he said.

* * * 
It was April 17, 1985, when state officials ordered that Thomason stop digging Cory Lake, which from the air looks more like a series of canals.

Since 1982, Thomason had been using a portion of his 600 acres off Morris Bridge Road as a borrow pit, scooping out mounds of dirt for nearby construction projects.

Dirt can be a lucrative business, and borrow pits can be especially valuable because once they're filled with water, the land along the banks of the pit can be sold as "lakefront property."

But the problem that state environmental officials unearthed was that Thomason did much of his digging in wetlands that fed the Hillsborough River, Tampa's primary source for drinking water.

Clay Gully Creek, for instance, was eliminated. During the dry season, the creek looked like an empty ditch, Kutash said. While hardly majestic, it did flow with water during the rainy season, draining an area that included Pasco County, he said.

"They dug that lake in the middle of the creek, and that made it our business," said Kutash, who now works in a division of DEP that doesn't police wetlands.

Thomason has called the damage caused by the lake minor, and said during a 1996 interview with the Times that the consent order was "just part of the process."

Yet much was riding on that consent order. It allowed the lake to remain, which has played a crucial role in the sales pitch for Cory Lake Isles.

A 2001 newspaper ad for the gated community shows several images: a husband and wife canoeing with their daughter; a grandfather fishing with his toddler grandson; a man riding a personal watercraft with his young daughter; a home overlooking the water. "An island lifestyle awaits you ... " the ad beckons. Thomason ran a TV ad in the 1990s that transposed a Port of Tampa cruise ship atop the waters of Cory Lake.

Many Cory Lake homeowners say they treasure the lake, an amenity not available elsewhere in New Tampa, which is heavy on walking trails and golf courses.

Paul Shearer moved out of Cory Lake Isles in February to Tampa Palms. He's 79 and wanted a smaller home. He said he'll always have fond memories of Cory Lake's fishing.

"It's a beautiful lake," Shearer said. "They had some real monsters. Biggest bass we ever caught was 10 pounds."

The lake wouldn't have happened without cooperative state officials, who not only allowed the project to continue with the 1988 consent order, but gave Thomason another boost in 1999.

Swiftmud allowed him to pump 1.5-million gallons a month into the lake, despite complaints from homeowners in the nearby rural town of Branchton who said Thomason was wringing their land bone dry. A tropical fish farmer said he was being driven out of business. So 80 of Branchton's homeowners banded together and filed a challenge that sought to prevent Thomason from pumping any more water.

Administrative Law Judge Lawrence Stevenson ruled in favor of Thomason, citing the expert testimony of his paid engineers and Swiftmud officials who said the pumping wouldn't wither nearby land.

But while state environmental officials twice saved the project's linchpin, Thomason hasn't been overly cooperative with officials who check to make sure he holds up his end of the 1988 consent order.

In 1992, officials with the county's Environmental Protection Commission were inspecting poor water quality at Cory Lake when they were "kicked off" the property by Thomason, according to a report filed by the Department of Environmental Regulation, which is now the DEP.

According to a DEP tracking report, Thomason missed the deadline for at least six payments of the $10,000 fine he agreed to pay in 1988. On March 13, 1991, Thomason told the state that he hadn't paid because the "financing was still pending."

Later that year, the Tampa City Council designated Cory Lake Isles as a Community Development District. The CDD designation allowed Thomason to borrow millions of dollars in tax-free municipal bonds that are paid later by homeowners who decide to live there. 

By July of 1992, Thomason paid the fine using CDD money - so it wasn't Thomason who paid the 1988 fine, but the future homeowners of Cory Lake Isles.

In 2001, Thomason told county environmental authorities they had no jurisdiction over Cory Lake Isles because he had been told years earlier by an official that his land didn't have any wetlands. So, Thomason argued, he developed the land accordingly, said Andrew Zodrow, assistant counsel for the EPC.

"He got upset," Zodrow said. "He said staff people told him he didn't have to be regulated. I sent him a letter asking him to demonstrate this. He can't just say, "Because I heard something from you 20 years ago, I don't have to comply.' "

Zodrow sent Thomason two letters in late 2001. He never heard back.

In August 2002, Thomason received a notice from the EPC warning about high levels of water pollution in one area near his project. The inspector measured the amount of light penetrating water by using a handheld monitor.

Readings of less than 10 mean people can wade knee-deep into the water and see their toes. Readings between 100 and 200, and the water looks like coffee with creamer. Readings above 300 are like very thick coffee.

The readings by the inspector were above 1,000.

"A reading that high would be half dirt, half water and you shake it up," said Bob Owens, an EPC supervisor. "You can't see at all."

In December 2002, Thomason was warned again by the EPC about a stockpile of dirt that was polluting nearby ditches and property.

Tom Whitman, who owns 2 1/2 acres of pasture next to Cory Lake Isles, said his property regularly floods with a thick clay muck that he says comes from Thomason's land.

"They've raised the elevation of what used to be swamp and pasture, so the water just naturally now runs across my property," Whitman said. "I didn't care until we started seeing this nasty, Mississippi River stuff."

Whitman said the water that drains onto his land during heavy rains is still dirty, but not nearly as bad as it was when he first complained two years ago. He said Thomason has put up some silt fences that capture much of the dirt.

But the agency's last inspection of Cory Lake Isles in 2003 showed Thomason hadn't made all the necessary repairs, said EPC enforcement coordinator Deborah Sinko.

An inspector next week will tour the property and decide whether to take further action, Sinko said. The agency will decide what to do after the inspection.

The EPC and DEP negotiate settlements with violators, who agree to pay into the state's Pollution Recovery Fund. If violators refuse to pay a sum deemed appropriate in the negotiations, then the agencies can sue.

Zodrow said the EPC averages about five to 10 lawsuits a year, and they're almost never cases involving wetland pollution.

Meanwhile, water quality problems have persisted in Cory Lake.

In 1993, the state warned Thomason that the lake was collecting too much sediment. During a 1993 CDD meeting, Dayne Piercefield, an engineer for the CDD, acknowledged that people were questioning the lake's muddy appearance.

"It would look much prettier if it was blue," Thomason told him.

"It will be blue one day," Piercefield promised.

But today, the water along the white sand beach outside Cory Lake's Beach Club is caramel-colored, suggesting erosion still taints the lake.

Water quality was bound to plague Cory Lake, said DEP's Kutash.

"Borrow pits don't make good bodies of water," he said.

Thomason shrugs off critical inspections as an unavoidable hazard in developing a large subdivision.

"They're just doing their job," Thomason said of the regulators. "All we can do is take care of it when it comes up."

Whitman is skeptical that water conditions will improve. He has lived at his Branchton home for 18 years, and has witnessed the transformation of ranch land and swamp into an elevated subdivision for affluent suburbanites. He was one of the homeowners who tried, and failed, to stop Thomason from pumping the lake with well water.

"This is what happens when you put a fictitious lake out there," Whitman said. "There was no lake. Just a bunch of small ponds.

"Now he dug it out, put all those homes in there, and he puts the problem on other people's property," he said. "He pretty much does what he wants to sell lots."

E-MAIL CCFJ COMMITTEES NEWS BACK HOME