City leaders approve $7,000 in funding to repair sinkhole

SALUDA — Saluda officials are looking to fix a problem that continues to grow in size — literally — on a property in the city.

The Saluda Board of Commissioners authorized a $7,000 budget transfer during its meeting Monday to fund the repair of a sinkhole that was recently discovered at the Laurel Drive Shop. City leaders will use around $5,000 of the allocated funds to purchase a new 6-foot pipe for the property, with the remaining $2,000 to be used for other materials and labor to repair the damage.

City Manager Jonathan Cannon shared information on the sinkhole with the board Monday evening, handing out photos of the damaged property. Since its discovery, the cavity has continued to grow in size, causing issues for the vehicles that continue to use the Laurel Drive property for parking and storage, Cannon said.

“It is about three times larger now than those pictures [of the hole] show,” he said. “We have a drive-over plate we put over top of it so that they could continue to operate. Two of those plates have now dropped into it. It’s just growing.”

The root of the problem is a 6-foot pipe running underneath the property, which reduces in size to a 4-foot pipe, though a reducer is not installed at the point where the cylinders change in diameter, Cannon said. The pipe has crumpled due to damage from the floods that impacted the city in May, with the tube now only measuring around 2 feet in diameter around the point of reduction, the city manager said.

As a result of the shrinkage, soil has begun to cave into the space around the pipe whenever it rains, causing a sinkhole to develop in the middle of the parking area.

Cannon requested a budget amendment of about $5,000 from the commissioners Monday in order to purchase a new 6-foot pipe from Asheville’s Ferguson Waterworks — the low bidder for the materials — to make the necessary repairs to fix the issue. The city manager said staff members are still working on estimates for stone material, labor and equipment for the project, as well as how to mate the new pipe to the existing 6-foot one on the property.

In order to help crews get ahead on the project, commissioners decided to authorize an additional transfer of $2,000 to fund other repair costs, which Cannon believes will help get the hole at least partially filled in, he said.

Cannon said it will take around two weeks for the city to receive the materials for the new pipe.