Tampa, FL – Mildred and Juan Scoleri were outdoors on their patio surveying the excavation work that the pool company had just finished before laying the foundation for the pool they’ve been saving for ever since Juan was still working three janitor jobs and one on the side to make ends meet. It was a dream come true; however, that dream has now turned into a nightmare. The entire state of Florida, with the exception of the lower keys, is suing the Scoleris for what they call “the total destruction of the foundation of Florida!”
It seems that underneath the Scoleri’s property ran the remains of an ancient aquifer that had long since dried up due to overuse of water by the citrus farmers in the area who, while knowing the water situation in the area was precarious, also knew that America loves its orange juice and the orange juice lobbyists run the water works, so to speak–that, and the fact that the central part of Florida has more water parks than God has headaches, not to mention a golf course on every corner—they don’t keep themselves green you know.
Once the water dried up, the cavernous aquifer remained, but no one thought to check just how big that aquifer really was. Seems it had been growing from the size of a small city, say Peoria, Illinois to its present size—the length of the state of Tennessee!
Geologists who are just now beginning to take thermographs of the area claim that the bedrock of Florida, if you can call that, is being held together by one extremely tenuous layer of limestone that is being constantly eroded away from the bottom up. Once that dissolves, say in the next week or so, they say that Florida is going to snap clean in half, leaving a body of water already dubbed the Florida Narrow Straits in its wake.
“The numerous sinkholes that have been occurring in the area were just a portending of things to come,” claims geologist Dr. Henry Stinkler.
“We are now faced with a natural secession in Florida. Florida is being cut off at the knees. We’re talking North and South Florida, with South Florida being an island. The oil is separating from the water—ok that one belongs to another disaster. But I ask you, how many more analogies do you need to hear?”
Meanwhile, the Scolaris aren’t taking this lying down, mainly because their property has been condemned and they have no place to lie down. But they are going to fight.
“I’ll be damned,” said Juan Scolari, “if we are going to be blamed for something that the entire state of Florida is responsible for. When they told us not to ask for a glass of water in a restaurant unless we really needed it, when we were told to take shorter showers or shower together, did anyone listen? Now, we are paying for it and by us, I don’t mean the Scolaris.”