(Photo by Robert Ford)
The home at 472 Main St. is slowly slipping into the abyss, as a large sinkhole caused by a broken sewer line continues to expand under its basement. The home, a rental property, has been condemned, and it’s up to the village to fix the problem because it’s liable for problems caused by village sewer lines.
The 15-inch sewer line was installed about 15 feet underground in 1902. The home was constructed just above it in 1935. Sometime within the last several months the clay pipe collapsed. Mike Marino, superintendent of the wastewater department, said the heavy rains of this past weekend exacerbated the situation. “This has probably been going on for some time,” he said.
When the pipe collapsed, the soil, which is mostly sand in the area, filled the pipe and ran down the line. The heavy rains then washed additional sand out from under the house and into the pipe, causing the hole to expand, undermining the foundation with it. Wastewater department workers spent the weekend running an exterior pipe around the damaged area so surrounding homes would not be affected.
At the June 17 meeting, trustees voted to hire Fred A. Cook Jr. Inc., of Montrose, NY to assess the damage and devise a plan deal with it, so village officials can determine if the home can be repaired or needs to be torn down. Cook’s bid of $34,925 was the lowest of five applicants.
Marino called the sinkhole “a bad one. The house is just falling in and we need to do something.” He said the village’s aging sewer lines, many of which are clay pipes installed in the early 1900s, are in bad shape, which is why the village will soon have all the lines inspected by a remote camera. Then the pipes will be lined with a plastic substance that will ensure there will be no more collapses.
A sinkhole on Partition St. caused traffic to grind to a halt several times last month.
I just ambled through your Saugerties assessment roll books, and they are as bad if not worse than the rest of the county assessment roll books. They make all the same mistakes (i.e., bad category/division/subdivision numbers; STAR exemptions for commercial lodging services and seasonal residences; corporations with parcels labeled “non-commercial) but also a mish mash of SBL numbers not arranged by owner name and by address? How is the fire department supposed to know what kind of structure they are responding to and how many people may be working or living there BEFORE they get there? Really bad.
There was a murder of a two year old in New Paltz at an illegal rooming house; 3 college students died in a fire in the Town of Poughkeepsie at an illegal rooming house; and a landlady of an illegal rooming house was murdered by her tenant in Ulster Town? Rosendale had a fire at an illegal rooming house too, and the fire chief said in the newspapers he didn’t know how many people were living at the place where a fire in a house was? No wonder the owner of this property fled with the rent money and deposit and left the village to sort it out.