CROTHERSVILLE
Following a recent heavy rain, water backed up in a ditch and reached the front steps of a residence on the south side of Crothersville.
That happened because a storm sewer line in a nearby gas station’s parking lot had been filled with concrete to fix a sinkhole.
Later on, a larger sinkhole developed on the south end of the parking lot.
Street Superintendent Chris Mains and Wastewater Superintendent Mason Boicourt both said they have a feeling if the owner of the Marathon station at 417 S. Armstrong St. has the new sinkhole fixed, it will be filled with concrete again.
An Indiana Department of Transportation official told them a right-of-way permit is needed to do the work, but they didn’t understand that because the sinkhole is not in the state’s right of way. U.S. 31, or Armstrong Street, is just a few feet away from the sinkholes.
To ensure there are no more drainage issues, Mains and Boicourt asked for the town council’s approval to spend more than $2,000 to fix the sinkholes themselves. They received unanimous approval to obtain a permit to do a spot repair.
Boicourt said when they get time to do the work, it should take about a day or day and a half to complete.
He said the first sinkhole on the north side of the property near Marshall Drive developed about eight months ago. The Marathon owner hired someone to fix it, but they poured it full of concrete.
“As spring got here with heavy rains, the ditch on the south side runs into town through the culvert,” Boicourt said. “The concrete stopped up the culvert, and everybody south of that got flooded out.”
He said he later jetted through the storm sewer line, which put a hole in the concrete because it ended up draining out.
“We only had to do that one time, but it took us probably about four and a half, five hours to get it done, to get through it,” Boicourt said.
Within the past month, a second sinkhole developed on the south end of the parking lot.
“We’re using high pressure in there, and we probably ended up blowing the other part out. We probably caused the other (sinkhole) when we were in there, but it’s aging,” Boicourt said. “We’ve done that before when we’ve jetted out a culvert and ended up blowing up people’s driveways just trying to get them open to let flow go.”
Boicourt said the sinkhole goes down about 3 feet, and a 12-inch metal culvert still has its bottom but is missing the top.
“Most of the excavation is already done because it’s falling in on itself, so we’ve got a spot repair there that we were going to look at fixing,” he said.
Council President Danieta Foster said the depth of the sinkhole is concerning if someone walks or runs across the parking lot.
Boicourt said they have placed traffic cones and barrels over the sinkhole to warn people, but they still have been hit and had to be replaced.
He said doing a spot repair is preferred because if they worked on the whole storm sewer line, which is about 100 feet long, they would have to shovel dig it because a fiber line runs through the ground in the area.
Knowing it would be fixed like the other sinkhole if Marathon handled it, the council agreed to have town employees do the work.