The story starts
above with the clearing of the land. In Florida a lot of the
surface earth is not hard-packed enough to support building
homes on. It is too sandy. So the first four feet is scraped
off and replaced with hard-packed earth. The hard-packed earth
is obtained from digging down in the earth. Conveniently, after
the large holes have been dug they are then made into retention
ponds and small lakes to help with the storm water run off.
A critical planning strategy for any community in Florida.
("A single Florida cumulonimbus cloud is capable of producing
700 million gallons of water, and merged clouds have produced
1.4 billion gallons for every 10 minutes of rain." from
'The Climate and Weather of Florida' by Henry, Portier and Coyne)