‘My yard is sinking.’ Midlands woman left with questions after sinkhole appears
Forest Acres resident Shelley Stokes was pulling weeds in her backyard on Feb. 2 when her foot sank into the ground.
Stokes, who has lived at her home on Academy Way since 2012, pulled back before using her gardening tools to poke around the ground’s surface. She was then met with a six-foot-deep sinkhole with water pooled at the bottom, she said.
“The first thing that I heard was the water,” Stokes told The State. “And then that’s what made me think, ‘Where is this water coming from?’”
Stokes began to look around her backyard and noticed the ground also had started sinking on either side of one of Richland County’s stormwater drains. She said she can’t say whether the sinkhole and the stormwater drain are connected, but it’s led her to ask more questions about the stormwater drain in her backyard.
She hasn’t gotten a lot of answers in return, she said.
A few homes in Stokes’ neighborhood have stormwater drains in their backyards. Stokes said her stormwater drain hasn’t been inspected in the 13 years she’s been on Academy Way. That has led Stokes and other residents to become concerned about how the county evaluates water damage in the neighborhood.
“I just don’t want to fix something, and then I have to fix it again and fix it again and fix it again and and then my yard falls in,” Stokes said. “It’s sinking. My yard is sinking. You can clearly see it sinking.”
What caused the sinkhole?
Sinkholes can form when pipes, drains or other buried infrastructure changes the way water flows underground, said David Barbeau, a professor in the University of South Carolina’s School of the Earth, Ocean & Environment.
The disruption to the soil’s original makeup can cause the water to run faster. Once water becomes more concentrated, it forces the top to collapse, forming the sinkhole.
Barbeau said it can be difficult to repair sinkholes and often requires the services of an engineer.
“There’s this cavity underground that’s holding weight above it, and unless you reinforce or fill in that cavity, you’re not going to be able to bear the weight of the stuff above,” Barbeau said.
Stokes posted on Nextdoor and Facebook on Feb. 3 about the sinkhole in her yard. She was curious if other people were having similar problems and if anyone had any information on the stormwater drains, she said.
The ground on either side of the stormwater drain has also sunk a little since Stokes first moved in, she said, noting that when she first started living at her house the ground was level with the drain.
She’s worried that other holes will show up throughout her backyard.
Several comments appeared under her Nextdoor post with some people saying that they had similar experiences, while others suggested seeing if an old septic tank could be the cause.
Stokes had two people from Richland County come out to her house and inspect the drain and sinkhole, she said. The first person walked around her yard and took a few photos. When Stokes followed back up after the visit, she received an email from Richland County letting her know her request had been resolved.
“I was like, ‘Can I have somebody come out here and talk? I would like to talk with them more about it,’” Stokes said.
The second person from the county concluded that the sinkhole wasn’t caused by the drain, Stokes said. But she felt like she wasn’t given enough details about what had caused the sinkhole. Since Feb. 2, Stokes has pumped out more than 120 gallons of water at the bottom of the sinkhole, she said.
Richland County came back out on Feb. 18 to fill one side of the drain and then closed her service request, Stokes said. She felt like her concerns were dismissed and thought the county could have done more to inspect the drain and the hole.
When a resident contacts Richland County about a sinkhole or drain issue, the county’s public works department looks at the area its in to decide if it needs to be handled by the county or by the City of Forest Acres, said Mike Maloney, the Richland County Director of Public Works.
“The stormwater drain in question includes a pipe maintained by Richland County,” Maloney said in an email to The State. “Richland County repaired the sinkhole by first repairing the pipe joint.”
Unsure residents
Stokes isn’t the only one concerned about inspections in the neighborhood.
Roi Canty lives one street over from Stokes on Sylvan Drive where a creek runs beside her house. A culvert pipe runs from the creekout to the front of her yard.
“Anytime we get any kind of hard rain, my front yard turns into a swimming pool,” Canty said.
The State sent questions to Richland County about the issues suffered by both Canty and Stokes. The county responded with Maloney’s statement referring to a drain pipe it maintains.
Canty said she has been looking into installing barriers that would block the water from entering her yard. But she’s not really sure where to go for help. She doesn’t have a plan moving forward, she said.
Stokes said she plans on getting someone else to come look at her yard besides the county to offer a second perspective. Right now, she’s covering the sinkhole with a piece of metal roofing, so that she and her dogs don’t fall in it.
“It’s one thing if it’s on the public road, but this is my backyard,” Stokes said. “I don’t really want it to get to the point either where you have to tear up my entire backyard.”
