Nature and time refill Lakeland's Scott Lake

Residents had hoped for quicker recovery from 2006 sinkhole

LAKELAND — Water has returned to the lake bottom beneath the pier at Scott Lake's Casa Loma neighborhood for the first time in a decade.

"It's only in the past month that we've had water all the way under the pier,'' said Don Luckie, president of the Casa Loma Association, one of the residential areas that circle the lake. "We were hoping it wouldn't take this long."

Scott Lake's water disappeared into the aquifer after a sinkhole opened beneath the 291-acre private lake 10 years ago this month, turning lakefront properties into lakeview properties and to hear some residents tell it, it wasn't much of a view.

Linda Jezard, who lives near the lake, said there were dead fish everywhere and for several days the smell was overwhelming.

She's happier now, explaining the lake was the main reason she and her husband, Michael, bought a home here in 2000.