By JEFF GEARINO - Southwest Wyoming bureau | Posted: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 12:15 am
Bill Spillman of Rock Springs points to the crack in the foundation of his home on Converse Court near the 'Tree Street' neighborhood in December 2008. Spillman's home and more than a dozen more in the area will receive new engineering inspections beginning next week to determine the extent of the damage done by a 2007 mine subsidence project. (Jeff Gearino/Star-Tribune
ROCK SPRINGS -- New engineering inspections of the "Tree Street" neighborhood homes allegedly damaged by a 2007 mine subsidence project will begin Monday, according to state officials and residents.
State officials signed a contract on March 25 with J.A. Cesare and Associates of Centennial, Colo., to perform the second engineering inspections on the downtown Rock Springs homes.
More than a dozen homeowners have been battling the state over the new inspections after rejecting the state's first settlement offers to repair the damages.
Homeowners contend the state's first offers were way too low to adequately pay for the much-needed repairs.
Wyoming Attorney General Bruce Salzburg notified the residents' attorney in an e-mail Friday that the available dates for the inspections will be May 3-8 and May 16-19.
"If possible, we would like to complete all of the inspections within a single time frame," Salzburg told Evanston attorney Tony Vehar.
Tree Street spokeswoman Becky Kelley said homeowners hope the new inspections will finally reveal the true extent of damage caused by the pilot project.
The project included a ground-pounding reclamation technique known as dynamic compaction, which had never been used in Wyoming.
Kelley said many homeowners continue seeing new damage that they believe has been accelerated by the dynamic compaction project.
The Wyoming Legislature approved a budget amendment this past session that directs $120,000 for the hiring of a "qualified" engineer to perform new assessments of the damaged homes.
The reinspections are expected to serve as the basis for new settlement offers from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Abandoned Mine Land Division and the attorney general.
DEQ officials have said that the offers should fairly compensate homeowners for damage from the dynamic compaction portion of the project.
State officials contend, however, that a lack of baseline information about homes and buildings surrounding the project has made it difficult for engineers to determine if the damage was because of the subsidence that has historically occurred in the area, or the dynamic compaction project.
Salzburg said JaNell Hunter of the Rock Springs AML office is in the process of contacting homeowners to schedule the new inspections by Cesare and Associates and their consulting structural engineer, J.R. Harris and Co.
Old mine voids
Rock Springs was built around coal mines, which were first developed in the 1880s to supply the Union Pacific Railroad. More than 100 million tons of coal was mined in and around Rock Springs over the next century.
One result is that many miles of underground mine tunnels traverse underneath most homes in the city.
At the city's request, the state initiated a mine subsidence project in July 2007 that aimed to free vacant land on a tract next to the Tree Street neighborhood for much-needed affordable housing.
The land previously could not be developed because of past mine subsidence issues, but the state devised a plan to use the dynamic compaction reclamation technique.
For three weeks beginning July 17, 2007, AML contractors dropped 35- and 25-ton weights more than 2,300 times over undermined areas in the tract to collapse the mine voids.
Homeowners' complaints about damage halted the project. Residents said the vibrations shook homes; cracked driveways, foundations, ceilings, walls, roofs and windows, and did other major damage.
The state sent in engineers to assess 19 damage claims submitted by residents and followed with its first settlement offers in 2008.
Last month, state-contracted engineers from Colorado-based Tetra Tech Inc. resumed an investigative drilling program in the neighborhood.
The drilling aims to help determine the exact cause of the continuing underground movement in the Tree Street neighborhood and what mitigation measure will be required to stop it. The firm is expected to have a final report on the drilling completed by the fall.
Contact southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino at (307) 875-5359 or gearino@tribcsp.com
