Albany personnel work to repair massive sink hole

ALBANY – Work to repair a large sink hole in central Albany is expected to take about a week, if weather permits, and the weather is looking to turn a bit crazy this week with rain moving in and frigid temperatures on its heels.

A portion of Cleveland Street caved in on Friday in the 1300 and 1400 blocks at the intersection with Seventh Avenue, and the roadway has been closed to allow for repairs.

“I’m assuming if they have to close down two full blocks, it’s pretty big,” Albany Public Information Officer Krista Monk said. “They say it should take a week to repair. With this stuff (weather system) coming in from the west, it may take longer than that.”

The collapse occurred after a water line broke near the intersection of Cleveland Street and Seventh Avenue, Albany Public Works Director Stacey Rowe said. 

“We got a call Friday night,” he said. “It was where a water line had broken (on) Cleveland. We had had some CSS (combined sewer separation) work going on in that area.”

The water infiltrated that trench line from the sewer work, he said, and when the road settled it left the gaping hole. The maximum depth of the hole was about 4 1/2 feet, and the section of damaged roadway stretched for 150 to 200 feet.

“The contractors were able to fix the water line on Friday night and restore service to customers,” Rowe said. “They came back Saturday morning and worked to repair the section of road at Seventh and Cleveland.”

That intersection was re-opened, but the remaining section of Cleveland Street will take about a week to complete.

“They’ll be working on that, weather permitting,” Rowe said. “We’ve got to have dry weather, dry materials to get it back up.”

The National Weather Service said that a front that moved into the southwest Georgia area early Sunday morning would bring rain through Monday afternoon. After the rain moves out, temperatures were expected to fall rapidly and drop below freezing on Monday night, followed by several nights of temperatures at or below freezing.

On Saturday morning, city workers were using heavy equipment to clear out the massive sink hole in order to repair an area that was around 150 feet long along Cleveland and 25 feet wide along Seventh.

Workers were using heavy machinery down in the sink hole, digging around sewer lines in an effort to level out the bottom of the hole.

Two blocks of Cleveland and one block of Seventh were blocked by the workers.