A Peachtree City woman is urging local residents to stay away from the bed of Lake McIntosh, the new county reservoir that is under construction adjacent to the Planterra Ridge golf course. [Read her first person account here.]
Suzanne Maiden said she was on the lake bed Sept. 11 in the early morning hours as part of her walking routine, planning to feed geese in the area.
But those plans changed quickly when her right foot began to sink in the soil, followed quickly by her left foot.
“It just felt like a vacuum, something sucking you down,” Maiden said. “Not just like you were sinking but also a force, there’s a suction.”
Maiden said the muck had the consistency of cold oatmeal, and it didn’t take long for her to become submerged waist-deep. That’s when she decided to stop fighting the pull of the quicksand, instead spreading her arms out and trying to get her body parallel to the ground.
Somehow, Maiden was able to crawl out on her belly until she reached a nearby dirt path that encircles the lake area.
“I stopped panicking and trying to fight it. I stopped trying to dog-paddle,” Maiden said.
While her brush with death was scary, what’s worse to Maiden is the thought that children could be endangered. Kids are often in the area looking for wayward golf balls, and she has also seen joggers on the lake bed as well.
Maiden said no fencing has been erected to keep residents out of the area.
“I would have heeded a sign,” she added.
Maiden said she hopes her tale will serve as a warning for parents who have let their children play in the lake bed, and also for others using the area.
“I’m so angry, because I thought this was so frightening that somebody who panicked, especially a school-age child, they would die,” Maiden said.
Maiden had been going onto the lake bed routinely as part of her morning walk, but now she will avoid the area, and she urges others to do the same.
In the meantime, county officials have confirmed at least one hole has been dug in the lake bed, filled with limbs and then re-covered with soil. It is not known if this type of hole is what Maiden became ensnared in, but Fayette County Manager Jack Krakeel has directed the county’s consulting firm to make sure the lake construction contractor applies enough fill to minimize any settling issues.
In an email, Krakeel also noted that care should be taken if the soil cover is designed to prevent future issues with water quality “to ensure that it is accomplishing the stated objective.”
One resident in the area told Maiden that the contractor dug a number of holes some 20 to 30 feet deep, using them to bury tree stumps and the like. The contractor used soil and sand to re-fill those holes, Maiden was told.
County Commissioner Steve Brown, who lives in the adjacent Planterra Ridge subdivision, said he opposes the burying of organic materials in the lake bed, when the contractor could instead grind and transfer the material instead.
