Our Friend The Sinkhole at 4621 North Winthrop is still open, nine months (and easily, 20 calls to 311) after we first reported it. (The residents had been calling it in for months before a reader wrote us about the situation.)The City came out to do some sewer rodding on Winthrop last week and told us, nope, not their job, it has nothing to do with the sewers, no idea what it is or why it's still lurking.
As much as we love the addition of three (three!) construction horses and a jaunty orange cone (upside down, yet), we wonder what it's going to take to get this deep hole closed. Some suburban kid stumbling into it in the dark after a concert at the nearly Aragon? Frankly, folks, we're out of ideas.
Just a comment from someone who has worked with city construction projects, but it looks like that one is likely due to a ruptured sewer connection from the adjacent property, in which case the city is right - it is probably the responsibility of the homeowner, or at least they are going to have to pay the city to fix it. You are generally responsible for your sewer connection up to the curb line.
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean there's still a broken sewer line under there? Or is that just a left over hole from after repairs? I guess I'm the type of person that would go buy some big ass bags of dirt and fill it in myself, if it was on my block, and if I was reasonably certain I wasn't making anything worse.
ReplyDeleteLast I checked, a couple days ago the sink hole on the SW corner of Kenmore and Lawrence was still there. Would be nice to have that one fixed.
ReplyDeleteAl - what it means is (probably) that either the water or sewer connection from the main line to the property is leaking, and washing out the material around it. It might still generally work for the house (might have some lower water pressure, might not notice at all for the sewer if it still runs) but the main in the street is probably fine. Once the material is washed away. the stuff above it collapses into that space, causing tyhe sinkhole. If you filled it, you might stop up whatever line is cracked, causing problems at the property, and if not, when more is washed away by the leak/crack, you'll get the same sinkhole in the same place.
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