Sinkholes, just the name gives one pause. They’ve swallowed up cars — in Chicago this spring — and people in cars — in Utah and Idaho in recent years.

 

By Robin Jovanovich

 

Sinkholes, just the name gives one pause. They’ve swallowed up cars — in Chicago this spring — and people in cars — in Utah and Idaho in recent years.

 

Luckily, the developing sinkhole in Rye’s Central Business District was not yet of the killer variety.

 

“But what started as a depression 15 years ago kept forming,” said City Engineer Ryan Coyne. “Our DPW crews would fill the hole and it would open up again. It got to the point where we had to place steel plates over that section so the street was passable.”

 

Coyne said he’d hoped that the City could wait to address the problem until next summer, when the reconstruction of Smith Street and Purchase Street between Smith and Elm (the work that was approved with the infrastructure bond) begins. 

 

But on Monday morning, DPW crews were back excavating the hole. After a lot of digging, they discovered that a sewer lateral from one of the buildings was connected to an old, abandoned sewer line. They connected the sewer lateral to the active line, Coyne reported. “When they were down there, they found a collapsed storm drain line and repaired that too.”

 

By Thursday, the crew was doing the repaving work.