Ever wonder how you can find out if any of the homes in your neighborhood have been investigated or repaired as a result of sinkhole activity? The following is a summary of Pasco County sinkhole investigation tips for finding out. Start out by going to the Pasco County Public Access to Permit Applications (PAPA) web site; pascocountyfl.net, then click on the type of permit you are interested in, either investigation of ground settlement permits or repair of ground settlement permits. Enter the permit date parameters. One of the earliest permits in the database was granted on March 28, 2007 so I recommend using January 1, 2007 for the permit date from entry. Use the current date for the permit to date. The remainder of the input blanks can be left blank. Click the search button. This will generate a table listing all of the permits. Click on the hyperlink permit number for information on that specific permit. Different information is listed under the various tabs. At the top or bottom of the table, click on the view report hyperlink. This will generate another table that can be exported into an Excel spreadsheet. Once in an Excel spreadsheet the data can be sorted by street name making looking at the neighborhood of interest quick and easy. The same procedure is used for either investigation or remediation permits.

To take the research to the next level and find out the results or recommendations of the investigation or remediation, go to the Pasco County Clerk of Courts website; http://www.pascoclerk.com/; click on the Public Records tab; click on the Search Official Records link; scroll to the bottom and click on I Agree to the Terms link. From here, enter the property owners name and click search. The search will return a list of all of the instruments recorded with the County Clerk for that property owner. Look for Report Sinkhole Activity or Remediation Ground Settlement in the document column. When you find that, click on the hyperlink in the instrument column for the respective report. On the next page, click on view document and in the next page, enter the code and click open image. Now you are there.