Sink Hole to Cost Thousands to Repair on Call Road

A portion of sidewalk on Call Road has turned into a makeshift bridge after a sink hole developed  because of a failed culvert pipe that will cost the city thousands of dollars to repair, according to Public Service Director Dano Koehler.

The pipe is used for draining water, but Koehler said that the broken pipe has not caused any flooding problems in the area as of March 8.

"Over a period of time the bottoms do rust out and [the pipes] have to be replaced," he said. "It is not our policy to wait for a pipe to fail before it is replaced. This was an unusual and unexpected event."

The service department does not know the cause of the culvert pipe failure.

"Perhaps we will know more when it is excavated," Koehler said.

It should take a few weeks to repair the culvert pipe and it "appears that we will be replacing all of the pipe on the north side of Call Road and will probably do some work on the portion of pipe under the road and to the south even though the road is safe for travel."

The city is still getting materials ready to fix the problem, but the portion of the sidewalk where the ground fell in is closed off. 

"Unfortunately this is not the most ideal time of year to perform this type of work, so weather will be a factor in how quickly this repair can be done," Koehler said.