Inquirer: Mudslide causes one hill of a problem for church

We don't see too many mudslides here in Columbus, but I've just come across a doozy, and it's a muddy mess.

It belongs to Carver Heights Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Illges Road and Eighth Street, on 2.5 acres between Eighth and Lindsay Drive. It's a mostly wooded lot and consists in large part of a heavily wood and very steep hill down to Lindsay.

Problem is, a big chunk of that hill is not so heavily wooded anymore, and it is a heck of a lot steeper after the great rains of December caused part of the hillside to collapse.

Myrtis Roach, chairman of the trustees of Carver Heights Presbyterian, contacted me about the problem.

"The city pushed (the mud and de

bris) back a little bit, but it's blocking the drains there, so there's no drainage. Whenever it rains, the mud and the water come across the road," Roach said. "There are trees there that are leaning and look like they're going to fall over because of the mudslide. It's really ugly."

Roach said he has been in touch with the city's engineering department and that they've been out to look at it but haven't gotten back to them yet.

So I called Donna Newman, director of engineering, and asked what the city was doing.

As a matter of fact, when I called, she had just been working on getting bids for an engineering firm to evaluate this problem and two others slope failures on the river and to design solutions. She said it's too early to tell what it might cost because no one knows what the solutions might be yet.

The city will be responsible for the slope failures on the riverbank, of course, but she wasn't sure how the one on Lindsay Drive will be funded.

"That's part of what has to be evaluated," Newman said. "Because rights of way, city roads and private property are involved."

Meanwhile, Roach said a playground that belongs to the church is currently about 50 feet from where the hillside collapsed. But the collapse has undermined the sidewalk on the south side of Eighth Street at the top of the hill. The city has erected a temporary chain link fence to keep people off of it because they could end up taking a potentially fatal short-cut down to Lindsay Drive.

In addition to undermining the sidewalk, the collapse appears to have undermined several trees along Eighth Street, to the point that a few of them are leaning precariously out over the street. One of them is a boneyard-dead pine that apparently got a bad case of the pine beetles.

Roach said he and his family won't drive down Eighth past those trees until they're taken down.

"I got a call from someone in the city's forestry department because I called it in to 311," Roach said. "They said they would come out and look at them."

I'm sure they will, if they haven't already by the time you read this. Otherwise, I've asked Roach to keep me posted on any new developments or mudslides.

Stay tuned.

Seen something that needs attention? Contact me at 706-571-8570 or mowen@ledger-enquirer.com.

This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 9:55 PM with the headline "Inquirer: Mudslide causes one hill of a problem for church ."