Busy beavers causing headache for HamCo school district
Jasper — The Hamilton County School District finds themselves in the middle of a beaver dam, so to speak.
What was first falsely diagnosed by an outside firm as a sinkhole on school district property at Hamilton County High School, is actually damage incurred by some busy little beavers, according to Chuck Lambert from General Services.
The beavers have been clogging drainage pipes and tearing up the ground, as well as causing a large hole in the pavement to open up. Because of the hole in the street that the school buses utilize for drop-offs and pickups of students, bus routes around the high school have been temporarily re-routed.
Click on the photo to go to a short film on the story. You might be asking yourself ‘how can beavers dig through asphalt’. Good question. Don’t worry, we answer questions around here. And I saw EXACTLY that hole first hand in my favorite beaver habitat on the border of Nevada. The beavers don’t touch the asphalt. But they dig out the dirt underneath it and when some lovely car (or school bus) drives over it the road crumbles. Where’s Hamilton county you ask? Brace yourselves. It’s in FLORIDA. As in lots and lots of these.
I’m sure you can understand why the beavers would feel it necessary to build their own pond rather than use one that is already – (ahem) – occupied. (Look closely at the lower right corner.) ( I’m sure alligators eat birds and beavers from time to time, but mostly they can’t be bothered. (Maybe it’s like us driving on the freeway. Sure we know that some people get killed on every freeway every day, but we assume it won’t be us.)
The thing that gets me in that film is the emphasis on the article “Never being intended to hold water”. Obviously, if there’s a culvert, the presence of water was planned for in the original design. The beavers just made it less temporary. Apparently the ditch holds a little more water than your story?
I will write the school about how to install a culvert fence and use the whole beaver pond as a science project to monitor the changes it makes to their ditch, but honestly I’m not expecting many converts.
I miss seeing alligators occasionally. I like their knees. Very Kermit.
