I’ve lived in South Marion long enough to remember when you could drive down a back road and still see trees instead of another giant “Coming Soon” sign stuck in the dirt. Now everywhere you turn, they’re clearing land, throwing up subdivisions, apartments, storage units and whatever else they can cram into every empty patch of grass.
Then people act shocked when another sinkhole opens up.
Maybe the experts can argue over droughts, aquifers, rain cycles and all the scientific terms, but regular folks around here see what’s happening with our own eyes. We keep pumping water out of the ground, paving over wetlands and stuffing thousands more people into an area that already feels stretched thin.
At some point common sense has to kick in.
Every week it feels like another piece of old Florida disappears. The woods get bulldozed. The traffic gets worse. The roads stay under construction. And now people are watching the ground literally open up beneath them. That ought to concern everybody.
I’m tired of hearing that “growth is inevitable.” So are hurricanes, but that doesn’t mean we should make bad decisions that make things worse. The people approving all this development don’t seem to be the ones living next to the flooded roads, dealing with water restrictions or wondering if cracks in the yard are something serious.
Florida has always had sinkholes, sure. Most longtime residents understand that. But it also feels like we are pushing this place harder and harder every year without stopping to think about what the land can actually handle.
Maybe instead of racing to build the next 500 houses, we ought to slow down long enough to ask what kind of Florida we’re leaving behind.
Because lately, it feels like we’re digging ourselves into a hole we may not get out of.
Keith Cameron
