Water officials hope some of the increased water flow from Lake Hancock will augment the groundwater beneath the Peace River. Tribune Photo by Greg Fight.

BARTOW - In periods of drought, the curious can explore the bottom of the upper Peace River without getting wet. That's great for finding arrowheads and other flotsam, but it's no good for fish and wildlife.

As Florida grew, more groundwater was pumped out of the Peace River watershed for agriculture, phosphate mining and drinking. That caused springs and, in places, the river itself to disappear.

When water does flow, much of it comes from Lake Hancock, one of Florida's most polluted lakes because of wastewater from the Lakeland area, agricultural and industrial runoff and unfiltered stormwater.

"Just about anything bad you can do to a lake, we've done to this lake over the last 150 years," said Jeff Spence, Polk County's natural resources director.

State water managers are looking to Lake Hancock for solutions. They're planning a $200 million effort to raise the 4,500-acre lake by a foot and clean up the water that leaves it.

But there are costs beyond tax money. Thirty-three families stand to lose their homes on or near the lake to the slow-motion flood that's coming.

In dry seasons, water flowing in the upper Peace River, primarily between Bartow and Fort Meade, can disappear into sinkholes faster than surface water flowing into the river can replace it. That kills fish and wreaks havoc on the river's ecosystem.

Restoring The Upper River

To stop this, the Southwest Florida Water Management District, also known as Swiftmud, plans to use Lake Hancock to funnel more surface water into the river and keep it flowing. A rudimentary dam on the southern edge of the lake will be rebuilt to make it happen.

Today, the dam spans an outfall stream that creeps slowly to the south, a few hundred yards south of the lake itself. A breathtaking oak hammock slopes gently down to the stream, punctuated by wide-winged water birds roosting on moss-draped tree branches.

It's some of the prettiest land in Polk County, until you get to the water. Murky, filmy and smelly, it's hard to imagine jumping into it. These days, the water level is low. And on the south side of the dam, the water flow that helps start the Peace River has been reduced to a pea-green slough.

State and county water officials hope some of the increased water flow from Lake Hancock will change that and augment the groundwater beneath the Peace River, a process known as recharge. But the lake project cannot return the Peace River to its spring-fed life of 50 to 75 years ago. Years of pumping have shrunk the aquifer too far.

Whatever benefits there are can't occur without the forced sacrifice of property owners along the lake. They've been living with the possibility they would lose their homes since the state first floated the idea of raising the water level five years ago. It became a virtual certainty in September when the Swiftmud board voted to move forward.

The state will negotiate with property owners in the hope of securing as many voluntary sales as possible. Officials have made it clear, though, that they will use eminent domain to force the sale of homes whose owners balk.

Fritz Musselman, head of land acquisition for the project, said Swiftmud needs 64 parcels of property, including 33 homes, totaling about 2,000 acres. The state already owns about 5,700 acres surrounding the lake.

None of those homes has been purchased, but the water district hopes to begin construction on the lake level project in 2009.

Forced To Sell

Some property owners say they never will be able to reproduce the quality of life their homes provide, regardless of what Swiftmud pays. And they worry the housing market downturn will depress the value of their homes at the moment they're being forced to sell and that their property taxes will jump when they move to a home somewhere else.

Margie Griffin and Joanna Leahy are neighbors in a lakefront neighborhood between Bartow and Lakeland. Both moved into their homes in 1989.

"We took everything we had and everything we saved and poured it into that house," Griffin said. "We thought it would be forever."

Leahy and her husband live on Lake Hancock, where they can watch the daily show put on by the lake's many alligators thrashing around for food.

"There's no replacement. We've looked for land all over," Leahy said. "This is true Florida."

The sense of loss has been compounded by how long the possibility of losing their homes has hung over the lakefront residents. Several property owners said Swiftmud has done a poor job of picking a plan, sticking to it and explaining it.

That has led to rumors, including a widespread acceptance that the lake is being raised primarily to provide additional drinking water to communities downstream.

County and state water officials say that's not the case. The prime benefit of restoring constant flow in the upper river is to ensure that fish and wildlife have sustainable habitat and that humans can continue to use the river for recreation.

At the same time, water managers point out that all Florida rivers are subject, by law, to minimum flow requirements. The upper Peace River, between Bartow and Zolfo Springs, isn't meeting its minimum flow requirements.

This project is the best way to comply with the law, the state says.

"It's not true that all this project is for is to send water to the coastal counties," said Mark Hammond, Swiftmud's director of resource management

The Swiftmud officials say they understand the homeowners' worries, and they insist they won't be gouged. "We have to compensate these folks fairly because we're forcing them out of their homes," Musselman said.

More Water Flowing Cleaner

The project to clean up the water is much less painful and expensive, with a projected cost of about $25 million.

It consists primarily of building a filtering marsh along the outfall stream on the southern edge of the lake on land the state purchased from developers several years ago. State water officials say that Lake Hancock is the prime source of water pollution for the entire Peace River watershed.

"We've found that Lake Hancock is contributing twice the pollutants to the river as any other part of the watershed," Hammond said.

There will be no effort made to clean the lake itself. The years of pollution have helped create a several-foot-thick layer of muck along the bottom of the shallow lake, which reaches just 10 feet at its deepest point.

Surface wind perpetually stirs the muck, suspending pollutants in the water. In most places, the muck is nearly as deep as the water above it, said Spence, the county's natural resources manager.

The only way to clean the lake would be to dredge the muck, an expensive undertaking.

Even dredging wouldn't make Lake Hancock pristine. It always has been heavy on phosphate and other algae-creating nutrients, even before modern development made it much worse.

"It was never a crystal clear lake," Spence said.

Water officials are clear, however, that they're after a downstream benefit, particularly for Charlotte Harbor, which has been labeled "an estuary of national significance."

Construction on the water quality project could begin in 2010.

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tampatrib.com.