The City of Omaha announced that it will move forward on the repair of a downtown sinkhole after recent rainstorms created conditions necessitating a faster fix to a problem that emerged last winter.
Back in January, a garbage truck entered the alley between Farnam and Harney streets along the west side of 16th Street. The truck fell through the pavement and into a void between two residential buildings, the Regis and Farnam 1600. The collapse damaged an Omaha Public Power District duct line and a city sewer. A duct line is a subsurface pathway that protects underground cables.
The alley has been inaccessible from 16th Street since the accident.
The fix is complicated, involving multiple parties and multiple steps. Summer rainfall changed the sequencing of the repairs and created more urgency. OPPD will begin repairing its duct line on September 8. The project will last through late November. The repair work will mean disruptions along a stretch of 17th Street and the full alley between 16th and 17th Streets. The sinkhole is near the alley’s 16th Street entrance.
Meanwhile, circumstances dictate that the city can no longer wait for the Regis building’s ownership to complete the waterproofing and foundation repair it needs. To prevent new soil from leeching into the building at 316 South 16th Street, the city is going to spray the exposed north-facing foundation of the building with a concrete mix. The city can do this work concurrently to OPPD’s first phase of its repair.
The city, however, must wait until OPPD has completed its duct line work before it can do what remains: fix the sewer line, remove debris, fill the hole and repave. In a best-case scenario, that work would take an additional four weeks with total work completed before the end of the year. This repair does not prevent the Regis building’s owners from performing waterproofing and foundation repair in the future when it is able, according to a press release from the mayor’s office.
The city believes that the Regis also should have waterproofed their building and fixed the foundation. Building owners and the city could not come to an agreement about who was responsible, the mayor’s office said.
