When the Street Disappears

I saw the email Thursday afternoon, that East Rock Springs was closed because of a sinkhole. Coming home that evening, we drove down Cumberland past Sussex, and multiple strands of yellow tape were strung across Sussex. Just driving by, I didn't see anything very dramatic that warranted closing a street.



After we got home, I walked back up with my camera to see what was going on. Bobby Potter and I stepped between the strands of yellow tape to get close enough to see, but Sheila Bookout, the Haygood pastor, intercepted us and sent us back to outside the blocked off area. She told us that between 3:15 and 3:30 that afternoon a six foot-wide sinkhole had opened up a few feet from the curb near Haygood on Sussex. Depressed asphalt extended toward the opposite curb; the undermined area could extend across the street or even farther and endanger both trees and utility poles on both sides of Sussex. She said the hole was 7 or 8 feet deep and maybe 20 feet across, under the smaller opening in the asphalt. It was something of a miracle that no cars or children had fallen into it, given the place and time of day that it appeared.

By yesterday afternoon when I got home from work, the city had trucks and excavating equipment and workmen in hardhats on site. This time we didn't try to get on the other side of the barricades, but could see that the opening was much larger. When I took this picture, they had stopped digging and were looking at something down in the hole. Moments later a worker stepped into the cup of the excavator and was lowered into the hole, presumably to inspect something at the bottom of it.




Of course we don't know what caused this latest failure of City of Atlanta infrastructure. Thursday night a neighbor told us that old maps showed a septic field in this area. The most likely thing is a leaking sewer line; water carries soil away through the sewer line, slowly creating an empty space above it, and when the empty space gets big enough, you have a sinkhole.

I have no idea how long it will take to fix this. Tom said it could be fixed by Monday. ("It depends on what they find," I said. "No," he told me, "it depends on how hard they work.") But Atlanta's problems with water and sewer lines go a long way back, and it was Mayor Shirley Franklin who finally did something about it. Fixing all the things that have to be fixed will take a long time and cost a lot of money. Atlanta residents can pay it through our water bills, or we can share the costs with everyone who works and shops in the metro area can pay it by continuing the 1 cent sales tax that otherwise will expire later this year. This is on the ballot on Tuesday.

So go vote on Tuesday. But if your polling place is at Morningside Elementary, at least at the moment you can't get there via Sussex Road.