Future
Dry Cave Systems of Florida Case Study
- Ichetucknee
Springs Blue Hole –
*
prepared by:
Juan
Griego
for the
Florida
State Parks Service
-2014-
FDCS of FL Case
Study:
Blue Hole -
Ichetucknee Springs
This paper is a proposal and
presentation of research for the Future Dry Cave Systems of Florida exhibition. The FDCS of FL is a fictitious
re-branding of the Florida Springs and watersheds, created as a visual and
informational campaign to foster a public awareness of Florida’s current water
issues as well as the condition of the Florida springs and aquifer. The
campaign focuses on the Ichetucknee Springs Blue Hole and uses contemporary
public exhibition strategies to promote and display the information and
research of a proposed future of a dry Blue Hole cave and a Florida dry cave
system.
The Blue Hole is a first magnitude spring, the largest of the
Ichetucknee springs which empty out into the Ichetucknee River. The river
expands to nourish a large ecosystem where it runs for about 4 miles until it
meets with the Santa Fe River. The local name for the Blue Hole Spring is “the
Jug” due to its interior shape and how it resembles a bottle. When looking down
into it, one sees the exiting of 26,668 thousands of gallons of fresh water per
minute, purified by the underground Karst limestone system that rests under the
visible Florida landscape. To experience the Blue Hole, one must enter it and
look into the underground cave system that rests parallel to the surface. A person
must also understand where the water came from.
Water that shows up in the Blue Hole has traveled through
miles of underground labyrinth-like Karst limestone that comprises the Florida
aquifer. Sometimes the water from the Blue Hole has traveled only a few miles
through man-made shortcuts such as wells and street runoff gutters, ditches and
canals, or through sinkholes which may or may not have been caused by humans. In
other occasions, the water’s entry points are in far off locations such as the
watershed’s uppermost point about 14 miles north in Lake City. Paynes Prairie
Sink also feeds the Ichetucknee, yet it is slow enough to allow for water to
pool up and feed the prairie’s thriving ecosystem. The headwaters of the
Ichetucknee, the main source of the Blue Hole’s water, is contained in
Alligator Lake which is 14 miles north in the southern outskirts of Lake City,
Florida. Anything that is put in Alligator Lake will make its way down to the
Blue Hole, and if it misses the Blue Hole, it ends up in the Ichetucknee River
somehow, through another corridor in the underground labyrinth. If the water
has not made it into the aquifer yet, it flows towards the Blue Hole through
the three tributary creeks or streams: Cannon Creek, Clayhole Creek and Rose
Creek. These creeks contain sinkholes, leading the water, contaminated or not,
into the underground system. Rose Sink, the main sinkhole leading to the
underground river, is often times where cave divers enter to explore the
aquifer. (Stevenson) When the FDCS of FL begins to take hold, the Rose Sink
will be a main entry point of full accessibility for wheelchair and pedestrian
traffic into the caves.
We currently have a plentitude of fresh water to swim in, but
I predict that with over-pumping, storm runoff and nitrate pollution, the Blue
Hole may end up as dry as Kissengen Spring, but with one main difference: the open
cave-like features of the Blue Hole’s shape may keep it from becoming the clay
mound that Kissengen Spring is. According to Cynthia Barnett “Of Kissengen, all that remains are black-and-white
photographs snapped by carefree locals with no idea they were documenting a
grand finale.”(“Hope lives”) Upon reading Cynthia Barnett’s book: Mirage, I began to contemplate what we
will do with our springs when they run dry?” The Jug, a swimmable water-filled
cave which pours out into a beautiful pool full of valisneria, fish and turtles
would be a humid limestone cave for hikers and spelunkers to explore on foot. “Kissengen
Springs, a once- popular tourist attraction in Central Florida that bubbled up
thirty cubic feet of groundwater each second, was the first major spring in the
Sunshine State to completely dry up due to groundwater overpumping.”(Barnett
35) If what Barnett wrote in her book Mirage
is true, all we need is to wait and not take any action in order to witness the
drying of the Blue Hole and most every other spring. But how long will we have
to wait?
Barnett
states: “Kissengen was the first major
spring in Florida dewatered by human activity. But it was not the last. In
Hamilton County near the Georgia border, the town of White Springs was a spa
and resort destination in the 1920s. Groundwater withdrawals dried out its
stunning first-magnitude basin in the early '70s. Fenholloway Spring in Taylor
County, bottled as "Fenholloway Sulphur Water" from the 1930s through
1954, also has turned to weeds. Another Taylor County spring called Hampton was
home to the Hampton Spring Resort with 60 guest rooms. That spring rarely flows
now. This is also the fate of Convict Spring in Lafayette County; Hornsby
Spring in Alachua County; Royal Spring in Suwannee County. In Union County, the
town of Worthington Springs was once known for a walled respite by the same
name, where women gathered for special "ladies only" swims. Today,
all that remains is a small, stagnant caldron of algae. Few ladies — or
gentlemen — would venture near.” (“Hope lives”)
In further
developing my idea, it occurred to me that in theory, future land use planning
for the Blue Hole’s conversion could make it into a fully accessible dry spring
for future generations of Floridians as well as visitors from around the world.
“The Future Land Use Element usually represents the ‘blueprint’ for land
development in the jurisdiction. The Future Land Use Element should include
broad guidelines related to land use patterns and population densities that can
be instrumental in implementing transit-supportive development projects.”
(Accessing Transit 11) Presenting the results of my research as a public
exhibit could in turn foster a desire in the public to preserve the spring that
we have now. In presenting the Blue Hole as a dry cave, I would be able to
exhibit data and current in depth information into the cave system through its
deconstruction and conversion. I would also be able to exhibit documentation
that could only be recovered by the hands of experienced underwater cave
divers. I began to investigate the Blue Hole more thoroughly.
Recently, a large 15’ saw cut log was rolled
into the Blue Hole by uninformed malicious visitors. I wondered how this log,
now partially obstructing the cave’s entrance, could be used as a positive
attraction when used in the dry cave. The log, a symbol of past human
interactions with the Blue Hole as a submissive force, could be milled and
machined into a railing system to be installed within the cave to facilitate
pedestrian navigation of the system. The repurposing of the log would accompany
the newly installed light emitting diode walkway lights which could in turn reduce
the risk of danger within the dark cave. According to the Florida Planning and
Development Lab, “Accessibility is a measure of the ability or ease of all
people to travel among various origins and destinations, as well as the extent
to which facilities are free of barriers and usable by mobile physically
disabled people, including wheelchair users, also known as full accessibility.”
(Accessing Transit A1) Thinking in terms of accessibility, the dry version of
the Blue Hole may never be fully accessible.
Within the Blue Hole is a system of 3 caves:
the first cave is only called the Entrance Cave, but is the most popular and
accessible portion of the system. This cave is what the locals refer to as the
Jug or more commonly known as the Blue Hole. Past the Jug is a wide and narrow
limestone passage which leads into the Blue Room. The Blue Room is close to the
size of the Entrance Cave but it has no vertical opening. The pathways leading
into the Loft Room are even narrower and echo the force of the aquifer’s water
pressure through semi- permanent ripples and waves formed in the silica sand
covered floor below. Finally, there is the Loft Room. The Loft Room is very
close if not larger in size than that of the Jug’s Entrance Cave. In this
space, the seemingly endless current of the water flowing through the aquifer
push against the exit wall of the room, creating a pressurized space that may
in fact only be held together by the water itself. Water is what supports most
of the Karst limestone cave system, and when the water disappears, the risk of
sinkholes opening up and caves “caving in” become real. The spaces past the
Loft Room become very narrow and reach a point of unexplored territory. So far
about 260 meters of the Blue Hole cave have been documented by cave divers. The
narrow passages between the rooms would be very difficult to pass through when
dry and therefore future planning on the expansions of these pathways is
crucial to the FDCS of FL project. Also, in investigating the Loft Room, we
must theorize as to what may happen when pressure is relieved from the walls
and ceiling of this cave. In order to maintain its structure in a dry cave setting,
we will have to engineer structural support systems that replicate the force
placed upon the Loft Room’s walls by the current, seemingly constant presence
of fresh water exiting the cave.
Cave divers use special suits and buoyancy
equipment to keep themselves in a constant state of equilibrium, and therefore
do not need to touch the surface of the Karst system unless necessary. On the
other hand, in a dry cave system, walls, floors and ceilings are at the
constant mercy of the people who traverse them. Because of the naturally
occurring uneven surfaces of the limestone rock, initial explorers as well as
public planning teams will drill and hammer rings and hooks to attach
guidelines in order assist with human balance while navigating the cave system
as it dries. Paula Gunn Allen writes in The
Woman I Love is A Planet, the Planet I Love is a Tree, that: “Our
physicality which always and everywhere includes our spirituality, mentality,
emotionality, social institutions and processes- is a microform of all
physicality. Each of us reflects, in our own attitudes toward our body and the
bodies of other planetary creatures and plants, our inner attitude toward the
planet.” (Reweaving the World 52) It is a given that when the Blue Hole and its
cave system becomes dry, our own attitudes towards the planet, its plants,
animals and ourselves will become explicit.
A cave diver exploring the early 21st
century Blue Hole navigates it in slow motion, with an intense care for her or
his surroundings. There is a sense of delicacy expressed in the diver’s
movement so as to not change or upset the system around them. It seems as if
the diver is in a dance with the water which surrounds him or her. The only
unresolved human disturbance visibly present around a cave diver is the
constant stream of air bubbles that exit a diver’s system and float up to cover
the limestone like pooled mercury on marble. Other human disturbances outside
of the diver’s reach are the high levels of nitrogen from farm fertilization
run off that leaches into the aquifer as well as pollutants from cattle
farming, the chemical treatment of water-resistant wood and many other toxic
bi-products of human “progress.”
“In the
United States, where milk and honey cost little enough, where private serenity
is prized above all things by the wealthy, privileged, and well-washed, where
tension, intensity, passion, and the concomitant loss of self-possession are
detested, the idea that your attitudes and behaviors vis-à-vis your body are
your politics and your spirituality may seem strange.”(Allen 53) With water and
the human body being deeply interconnected, where over 90% of the human body is
comprised of water itself, attitudes towards protecting water and our bodies
seem strange to many in western society. It is in this strange-ness that the
FDCS of FL project exists. Xavier Cortada likes to phrase it: “Art itself is
about making something strange in order to bring attention to
it.”(Presentation) I believe that this strangeness is not absolutely necessary,
but what it does, in deconstructing the “strange” is challenge the assumptions
of what is considered “normal.” The strange may not be strange at all; it is
just its existence in a world constructed to function within a specified
metaphysical formula. The strange that I wish to make explicit through this project is
our illogic when looking into the human and "natural" future.
In the Helen
Mayer and Newton Harrison’s large, over a decade long project titled The Lagoon Cycle, Newton Harrison took
the role of the fictitious Lagoonmaker as he attempted to recreate an already
functioning eco system for the sole purpose of supplying a large amount of
delicious crab meat. He visited Sri Lanka, met with fishermen, had crabs
shipped back to the states for him, learned about the cycles of the Sri Lankan lagoons
and replicated the cycles in man-made tanks with filters and feeders, all at a
high energy cost. Helen Mayer Harrison took on the role of the Witness, of the
person looking from a short distance, being the consciousness of the
Lagoonmaker. Over time through this large project, Witness and Lagoonmaker formed
a great dialogue which expanded through the inevitability of an unsustainable
micro system.
The unsustainability of things expanded in
the Lagoon Cycle to conclude with a planet Earth that had risen in sea level
due to the greenhouse effect of global warming through “efficient pollution.”
“Sometimes I dream of the water buffalo in its wallow in Sri Lanka, the one
that ran afoul of the gasoline engine and is being replaced by the tractor. Now
that tractor does not replicate itself freely nor provide milk, nor utilize
weeds as fuel nor produce fertilizer and fuel with its dung. Yet the tractor
maker would say that the tractor is a bold invention; an improvisation that
will change the state of farming. It is more efficient, it can cover more
ground in a day. It is modern and cheap and helps bring people into the technological
domain.”(Harrisons 94) The Harrisons are writing about an illogical cycle that
is happening due to the machine maker creating a desire in the farmer to become
part of a future society, yet the machine maker’s future society cannot be
fully realized nor predicted with certainty. This future is in beta-test mode,
and this mode does not weigh into its computations the irreversible effects of
pollution on the planet’s eco systems. I believe that the western societal
value of technology is extremely high when juxtaposed with the natural or
wildness of the eco system. Whereas the buffalo in the Lagoon Cycle serves a
great function and is efficient, so is our aquifer, trees, plant life and
ground sediment filtration. The FDCS of FL project provides a form of the
Harrison’s Lagoon Cycle by attempting to place all the technology necessary for
its survival on display as developed research, ready to install and prone to
failure.
The FDCS of
FL project will contain a series of outdoor information panels identical to the
panels installed in Ichetucknee Springs Park. These panels will inform visitors
of the plans of a future dry park as a way to include and invite public opinion
and suggestions into its development. Towards the entrance of the park there
will be a semi permanent outdoor pavilion exhibition, complete with seating,
interactive cave draining maquettes and dioramas predicting the near future
construction and expansion of cave passageways and accessibility routes into
the underground Karst system. A video located in the exhibition entrance will
show the process of repurposing the Blue Hole sawed log into the beautiful
railing that will extend deep into the cave, with authentic samples of the log
for visitors to touch, to feel what it was like before it was turned into the
underground rail. A take home souvenir of the FDCS of FL in the form of a dry
Blue Jug keychain will be given to every visitor who has completed the tour of
the project.
For the more
athletic and adventurous visitor, a series of rock climbing walls with attached
rings, spikes and rope will allow people to truly immerse themselves in
navigating the future terrain and engage with it as would a future worker in
his or her environment during the early stages of the FDCS of FL Blue Hole
development. All rock climbing participants will be allowed to wear the
official FDCS of FL spelunking helmets, cut resistant gloves and Near Field ComCave
system. The Near Field ComCave system is a technology created for the future
workers of the caves, installed by early 21st century cave divers
when the Blue Hole will still be wet. This system will inform the workers via
led screen how far into the cave they have gone and how far they will have to
travel until the last known ending. It will also provide live saving
information on how to return to the surface and alert them to any dangerous
obstructions in the way. The worker, just like the rock climbing visitor, will
also be able to input information on a cave’s condition and progress. In order
to fully engage with the exhibit, a series of trained volunteers will guide
visitors through the various portions of the exhibit as well as take them to
the Blue Hole: the test site where the first planned development of the dry
caves will occur.
Visitors
will follow tour guides to the Blue Hole where they will be given informational
pamphlets with imagery of the dry cave in order to compare and contrast the
two. The volunteer guides will document any visitor commentary, suggestions and
recommendations in order to further the project into fruition.
Current
projections into the initial cost of developing the first site are unclear due
to the current abundance of freshwater still flowing down south through the
watershed and out of the Blue Hole, making it difficult to draw out engineering
plans on site. When comparing this project to some current above ground
developments such as the tear down and construction of student housing east of
the University of Florida, the minimum costs can be upwards of $500k. A
positive aspect of building within a cave system is that most of the structure
has already been made by the effects of slightly acidic water which has flowed through
the limestone system since perhaps the Eocene era. This reduces construction costs
quite significantly and in turn brings the focus back to the accessibility of
the space itself.
For the Blue Hole, a staircase can be carved
out of the limestone surface of the dry pool much like the design of the
Devil’s Den sinkhole. If the staircase were made wide enough, it could also be
adapted to house an electrified wheelchair ascent and descent mechanism.
Progress and innovation through ideas such as these are what will make the FDCS
of FL a reality.
Projected
costs for the FDCS of FL project exhibit will be very low considering that the
development of the exhibit is at no cost. The cost of materials and
construction of display panels, printing of pamphlets and the installation of
dioramas will be under $1500. The outdoor display panels, coated in ultraviolet
protective resin, will be temporarily installed with no need of cement or the breaking
of ground. The exhibition guides will be unpaid volunteers who are given free
passes to the spring for future entrance at a later date. According to the park
personnel, although the exhibit may be better suited for the park’s museum
space, the main pavilion closest to the bathrooms in the Ichetucknee Springs
Park North Entrance is free for public use and can be secured at sunset by the
project volunteers upon the end of their shift. This space provides ample
amounts of foot traffic from people coming to visit the springs as well as the
people tubing down the river. A complete tour of the exhibit including a visit
to the Blue Hole can be accomplished in roughly one hour, and the take home
pamphlets and gifts will leave a more permanent imprint on the spring visitor.
I trust that an exhibit on the FDCS of FL
will have several residual effects on the Ichetucknee Springs visitor. One key
effect I wish for the visitor to take with them is a greater awareness of the
Florida aquifer, its location and function. I wish for the viewer to allow
themselves to feel delicate, by looking into the future tense of the Blue Hole
as a dry spring. I understand that a future of a Florida with dry caves may be
short sighted. If one were to analyze the real threats to the aquifer, it can
be understood that salt water intrusion by fresh water over pumping and sea
level rise is much more probable than only having dry caves, and this salted
future could be interesting to explore as well. The sad reality is that the
future human response to such a catastrophe may be positive, because if one
were to study salt water within an aquifer, it can be concluded that the salt
water will also drop in temperature to mimic the constant 71/2 degree year round
temperature of the springs. Visitors will be more buoyant and less afraid to
swim without a floatation device, and the introduction of marine life into a
spring system could be a colorful and disturbing photo opportunity. It could be
theorized that salt water will be clearer once it has flowed through the Karst
system, and to the many tubers that float down the Ichetucknee River, they will
not notice a difference. However, if the Blue Hole does dry out, so will the
river and the other springs, rendering Ichetucknee Springs as the new Florida
spelunking attraction for the world to interact with, and the river in turn
will be great for 4x4 mudding.
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