BETHEL – Selectmen at Monday night’s meeting discussed what to do about a 300-foot-long sinkhole under one lane of newly repaved Paradise Road.
After much back and forth talk, though, the board decided to wait until next spring to fix the problem.
Wastewater treatment plant manager Rob Gundersen argued that the town should repair the section.
He believes that after the town replaced sewer mains under the road, water from excess rain undermined a foot of gravel, causing the pavement to sag.
“We’ve got to get the water away from it. There’s a sinkhole right in the middle of the road,” Gundersen said.
“We ought to put in cold patch, so you don’t have a swimming hole there that fills with water and freezes. It’s an accident waiting to happen. It will be all black ice this winter,” he added.
Selectman Jack Cross said the cold patch won’t stick.
Selectman Don Bennett agreed with Gundersen.
“I think it’s ludicrous to think that we can just let it be,” he said. “If nothing else, at least cut a piece out and pull it up to see if there is water running under it,” Bennett added.
Selectmen Reggie Brown and Dennis Doyon said the town should wait until spring to “fix it right.”
Cross disagreed.
“I know one thing: something will happen soon and there’s going to be trouble on Paradise,” he said.
Gundersen also said the pavement joints are starting to crack.
The town is still paying on the original $630,000 loan for the project.
Selectman Stanley Howe ended the conversation when he said the town would take a “wait-and-see approach.”
“It’s not that we want to, but that’s the way it’s got to be, I guess,” Howe said.
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