LIVERMORE FALLS – Recent heavy rains are believed to have caused a washout over an old box culvert on Haines Corner Road, off Route 133 in the East Livermore section of town.

To reline a culvert will cost an estimated $50,000 but to do a total rebuild and putting a new culvert in, the town was looking at $200,000, Town Manager Martin Puckett said.

The washout created a sinkhole about the size of a manhole in the road, he said, and there is about 20 feet of material on top of the culvert. They won’t know how deep the hole is until the work begins.

“We’re going to bring in a metal culvert and put it inside the box culvert,” he said.

Luckily, Puckett said, that road was scheduled to be paved this year.

The money will come out of the town’s $19,000 contingency fund and the rest from surplus, he said.

Since this is an emergency, the culvert will be fixed and then there will need to be a town meeting to ask voters to approve the transfer of funds, he said.

In the meantime, traffic is being detoured around the area. Ted Berry Co. of Livermore is going to do the work.