A small sinkhole formed outside of Pardee Hall last week due to a water line break. While the break has been repaired, a full restoration of the sidewalk is not expected for at least a month.
Repairs to the approximately foot-wide sinkhole began on Monday, though a comparably large metal fence was installed around the hole last week “out of precaution,” according to college spokesman Scott Morse.
The college was not aware of the water line break until repairs to the sinkhole began, Morse wrote. Water was shut off in Pardee for over an hour on Monday afternoon to enable repairs to the line.
The repair crew excavated a roughly 20-foot-wide ditch around the sinkhole to access the broken water line.
“Ground level resurfacing” is to be completed this week, according to a campus-wide email from the communications division, though total restoration of the brick pathway will not occur until April or May “when asphalt becomes available.”
Geology professor Dru Germanoski, the self-proclaimed “sinkhole person” of the geology department, said sinkholes related to human development have become the norm.
“In the modern world with humans, it kind of is a traditional sinkhole,” he said. “They’re often utilities related.”
Germanoski called such sinkholes “a classic chicken and egg problem,” where it’s often unclear whether the leaky pipe caused the collapse by washing out the ground material or whether the collapse caused the pipe to crack.
Sinkholes aren’t uncommon on Lafayette’s campus due to the college resting atop relatively soluble dolomite, according to Germanoski. He estimated that sinkholes occur on campus once every few years.
Luckily for English majors and mathematics professors, Germanoski said the chance that Pardee would fall into this sinkhole was “probably pretty slim.”
