Neighbors concerned Fort Lauderdale lake to be filled with concrete and sand

A lakefront community in Fort Lauderdale is bracing for life without a lake. It will be filled with concrete debris and sand – leaving neighbors worried about what lies ahead.

Rock Pit Lake is beloved by many in the Lake Aire Palm View community, but records show its proximity to a long-closed city landfill and incinerator has made it a concern of state and federal environmental agencies.

So the owner of the lake and surrounding land is being allowed to fill it in.

For Victor Thomas, in the early 1970s, it was love at first sight.

“I looked in the backyard and I saw this lake,” he recalled in an interview. “I love fishing, so I fell in love with the lake.”

And also with the college sweetheart whose family lived on it, his now-wife Annie.

She says when her family moved there in 1962, the lake “was absolutely gorgeous.” So she and Victor bought their own house on the lake, where generations have launched boats and cast their fishing rods to try their luck.

But soon, there won’t be any fish or deep water to boat or fish in, as the landowner has approval to fill it in with concrete and sand taken from construction sites, dredging and demolition.

The landowner, RPL Land LLC, has approval to dump clean concrete and fill into the 28-acre lake that is in places 60 feet deep. It could take 100,000 typical dump truck loads before it fills up.

The company has declined to comment to NBC6 on the project.

But Annie Thomas has some thoughts.

“I don’t see the point, there is no point,” she said.

One point, the state environmental records reveal, is to cover on the lake bottom dangerous heavy metals produced by a city landfill and incinerator just to the south that operated from 1954 to 1978.

Victor Thomas worries the work might stir up trouble.

“Whatever’s buried down in there needs to stay down there,” he said.

The state is requiring the water be monitored and that work stop if certain levels of pollution are exceeded.

RPL Land LLC got approvals from the state, county and city by submitting documents that detail, among other things, how much stormwater could flow into the area.

But the NBC6 Investigators found their plans and other records conflict on how much water will flow.

For example, stormwater drains from an eight-acre paved lot just northwest of the lake into a storm drain that connects to the site, according to a City of Fort Lauderdale record.

But the landowner’s engineers reported it does not and excluded it from their stormwater calculation.

The engineer’s plans also found two pipes feeding stormwater toward the property, on the north and northwest sides.

But the Army Corps of Engineers reported the lake received stormwater from three drainage grates, including one on the east side not identified in the engineer’s drawings.

NBC6 found one grate to the east outside the lakefront home Charlie Dixon’s lived in for nearly 60 years, and he said he was there when a pipe was buried leading from that drainage grate to the lake.

“I was right here when they dug it and put it in,” he told NBC6. “It’s back there and I do know it’s back there.”

NBC6 reached out to the engineers involved and have not received a response.

Broward County tells NBC6 Investigators that even if the plans failed to account for all the offsite runoff that might occur during a storm, it would likely not have led to their rejecting the plans. That’s because it has no record anyone got permission to install drainage pipes into the lake. So the landowner didn’t have to accommodate that stormwater in its plans.

Neighbors fear if the plans did not account for all the runoff, what could happen when tropical systems pass over their homes.

“This whole area drains into this lake,” said Victor Thomas.

The plans include areas on the edge of the land to handle stormwater run-off.

Even now, Thomas said, “This entire street drains back in front of my house and when it rains it literally floods because everything drains my way.”

As for what he considered his backyard for decades, he’s being told much of it will soon be fenced off and become the bank of a retention pond the landowner will construct to handle anticipated runoff.

He expects the dock where he and friends have family have spent countless hours enjoying the lake will be “knocked down. I have to take it down. It’s gone, my dock, everything, this whole back area. I lose it all.”