HOA Sold Me Their Dried-Up Lake for $9,000 — Then Tried to Take It Back After a $41M Find
Chapter 4
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The pump building's lock broke under one twist of my wrench. Inside were empty shelves, a dead motor, and dust thick enough to show every footprint. Most belonged to raccoons. One did not: a clear boot mark crossed the floor toward a metal cabinet where a clean rectangle on a dusty shelf showed that something had recently been removed.I photographed it before touching anything. Behind the cabinet, I found a rolled plan wedged against the wall. Its edges were stained, but the main lines were clear. The plan showed the lake, its dam, and a buried pipe leading toward the ditch Walter had pointed out. Someone had drawn a red circle around a valve beside the building. Across that circle were three words written hard enough to dent the paper:Keep this open.I knew engines and pumps well enough to understand the drawing. If that pipe ran where the plan showed, an open valve could let water leave the lake. It did not explain everything; the pipe might be broken, or the plan might be wrong. Still, I stood there thinking about the crews, the missing records, and a lake the association said had simply become too expensive to save.I called Rebecca and sent her photographs. She told me to leave the valve alone until someone checked the structure and the downstream channel. Then I called a retired equipment operator named Frank Dawson, who sometimes helped with my larger repairs. We agreed to clear loose brush around the building and uncover the outside access cover. That would let an engineer inspect it without anyone crawling into a blind hole.Frank arrived Saturday with a small excavator. Melissa and Owen stayed up by the road collecting cans while I guided Frank along the bank. He removed one thin layer of soil at a time. Under the roots, we found fresh gravel, then a sheet of heavy black plastic. Neither belonged there according to the old drawing.Frank stopped the machine and climbed down to look. The plastic covered a narrow trench leading toward the lake. Half-buried inside it was a length of pipe that looked much newer than the rusted fittings in the pump building.I knelt to brush dirt from a joint. That was when I heard an engine start on the other side of the willows.A second later, Walter came stumbling around the building, waving both arms. "Get away from that bank!" he shouted.I jumped back as the ground beside the excavator cracked. Frank was still standing near its tracks. The soil dropped beneath one boot, and I caught his jacket before he slid into the opening. We landed hard together.Somewhere below us, water began roaring through a pipe, growing louder while the edge of the hole crumbled toward our knees. Up on the road, Melissa grabbed Owen and pulled him away from the fence. Through the branches behind Walter, I saw a white pickup speeding toward the far exit.The hole widened with a heavy crash, exposing a concrete shaft beneath the bank. Frank scrambled backward, but my foot was trapped under a root.