Looking for neighborhoods like Winter Park

[j in florida]

Mt Dora is not and will never be anything close to Winter Park, no matter how much they may think so. Don't get me wrong, Mt Dora is really cool, but comparisons to Winter Park are completely unfounded, except for attitude.

Lake Dora is a polluted cesspool complete with fishkills, clouds of blind mosquitos, genetically damaged alligators, and green water with feet of muck on the bottom. It's pretty to look at from dry land, but it is ugly and smells by boat. It's fine for cruising, but I would not recommend getting in the water.

[Prichard]

Lake Dora is not a poluted cesspool with mutant Aligators. I have water skied in this lake many times, and not that long ago. They are deep spring fed lakes, and the polution flows downstream into Lake Apopka, which is poluted. Overall, the Dora Chain is a decent chain of lakes. On the contrary, Lake Maitland and Virgina are fairly poluted, small, have too many boats on them, and you can find pleanty of trash floating around in the Winter Park lakes. If one chain of lakes smells worse than another, I'd vote for the Winter Park chain - it allways has a distinctive mucky smell to it - but so do all lakes! Personally I'd never live on a lake. They smell, have mosquito problems, flood, and cost way too much for the privilage of waking up every morning and smelling lake stink. FWIW, I grew up on lakes in Maitland. Living on a lake ain't all that its cracked up to be. I'd rather have land seperating me from my neighbors than water.

[j in florida]

When is the last time you went skiing on Dora? 1945? (jk, I'm not trying to flame) I'm by those lakes several times a week. When I got my first Ski Nautique, I went on those lakes on the weekend because I heard there was rarely anybody out. I quickly found out why. Dead floating fish everywhere, nasty smelly green water, gators all over the place, and the water bubbling like crazy from the carp wiggling around the muck on the bottom. Now if you are comparing the Dora chain to the Winter Park chain, you make a good point. Winter Park is a cesspool from decades and decades of lawn fertilizer and pesticide runoff, untreaded stormwater runoff, and septic tank seepage. Those 2 chains are the worst in all of Central Florida from a water quality standpoint.

I'm not sure I agree with you about the direction of the flow. There is a large spring on the southern end of Lake Apopka and Apopka flows north through the canal into Beauclaire, Dora, Eustis, Griffin, then up the Ocklawaha. Thus, the filth of Lake Apopka goes right into those lakes. It will be decades before those lakes clean up, if they ever do.

I live on a lake. It is crystal clear and smells wonderful. There are a number of lakes in Central Fla that are clean--Conway, Butler, Brantly and the Clermont Chain come to mind.

[Eastbank]

In fairness, the city of WP has made great efforts over the past 10 years or so in improving the water quality of the lakes and it has made a *tremendous* difference in just a decade. Its very easy today, in 2007, to see clear thru to the bottom of Lakes Oseola and Mizell. This is remarkable given that the WP chain has been heavily urbanized (relative to these other chains), or seen heavy agricultural use, for about 100 years. That chain is indeed small for boating/skiing, but the residents see that as an advantage- it keeps the boat traffic down!!