Inquirer: Sinkhole prods city to watch sewers

So, since Mike Owen actually gets a vacation every now and then, I decided to give him an early Christmas present and pick up the Inquirer.

How hard can it be to find a problem in Columbus? Not difficult at all, it appears. All you have to do is walk the three blocks from home to work.

Thursday afternoon, a two-man crew the city had contracted was repairing a sinkhole in the 700 block of Broadway, near the law office occupied by Snipes and Snipes -- by the way, that is the best name ever for a lawyer. The sinkhole has been a problem for at least two years. The city has repaired it a couple of times, but the Broadway brick pavers sink not long after the work is done.

This time they got serious, digging a rectangular hole that looked eerily liked a grave in the middle of the southbound lane. Not saying anyone in the city would have buried a body, but you sure could have on this one.

After talking to the guys who were doing the work, it was decided we better call an expert. In this case that expert is City Engineer Donna Newman.

As suspected, it was a problem with the Combined Sewer Overflow System, Newman said.

"Apparently, two pipes were misaligned, causing them to replace portions and put in a manhole," she said.

That should fix it, right? End of story, right?

Not so fast.

When the workers filled in the hole, they didn't put the brick pavers back. They patched it with concrete. As one of my neighbors said, "That's unacceptable."

Maybe not. The sinkhole that was repaired Thursday is one of several in the downtown Historic District. The city will be looking at the Combined Sewer Overflow System closely in coming months, putting a video camera in it and identifying the problems.

Some of the issues will be on Broadway, while there will be other streets in the district. Since that work is being done, Newman said the concrete patch on the 700 block work was done as a temporary fix. If you look closely at the five-block stretch of Broadway that is paved with bricks, you will find a number of concrete and asphalt patches where utility work has been done.

The city will repair those spots and replace them with bricks once the sewer work is completed, Newman said. There is no timetable right now to start the needed sewer work because they have to get the video first, she said.

Which means if the city is unsure when the sewer work will be done, it can't commit to when the repairs to the brick street will happen.

But it's going to happen, Newman said.

But for now, it appears there is one less sinkhole on Broadway.

This story was originally published October 25, 2015 at 11:07 PM with the headline "Inquirer: Sinkhole prods city to watch sewers ."