OWNERS OF DAMAGED ROCK SPRINGS HOMES PIN HOPES ON REINSPECTIONS

GREEN RIVER -- Bill Spillman remembers the day in August 2007 when his house's foundation broke apart a few weeks after a controversial mine subsidence project near his home ended.
Spillman bought his modest home on Converse Court in 2004 near the "Tree Street" neighborhood, and the 30-year old house had never experienced subsidence problems before.
He believes the "dynamic compaction" portion of the mine subsidence project -- which included dropping multi-ton weights to collapse old mine voids in the area -- literally "blew apart" his foundation.
Spillman's home still hasn't been fixed. And now his family room floor is cracking as well.
"It looks like something tried to come up from underneath ... and just shattered the whole floor," he said in an e-mail last week.
"The concrete slab underneath is spider-webbed with a bunch of full, thick cracks that runs from wall to wall," Spillman said.
"Some of the cracks are 11 feet by 8 feet and go underneath the carpet I haven't lifted up yet," he said. "I think this pretty much totals this house."
Frustrated and angry, homeowners including Spillman in the downtown Rock Springs neighborhood say they are still waiting for the latest engineering reports from state-contracted engineers so their houses can finally be fixed.
Engineering teams with J.A. Cesare and Associates of Centennial, Colo., reinspected more than a dozen of the damaged homes in May. The inspection reports are expected to serve as the basis for new settlement offers from the state to repair damage from the ill-fated mine subsidence project in 2007.
Spillman and more than a dozen other area homeowners have been fighting the state over the new inspections after rejecting the state's first settlement offers in 2008 to repair damaged homes.
Homeowners contend the state's first offers were way too low to adequately pay for much-needed repairs.
Tree Street unofficial group spokeswoman Becky Kelley said homes in the area are continuing to experience damage, which homeowners attribute to accelerated subsidence from the dynamic compaction.
She said homeowners are still pinning their hopes on an equitable settlement as a result of the reinspections, which residents believe will finally reveal the true extent of the damage caused by the project.
"Here we sit going into our fourth winter with our wrecked homes," Kelley said.
"We are all continuing to have more problems ... I can hear the ground grumbling beneath me (most days) and houses are continuing to move and crack," Kelley said.
"They keep telling us to hang on ... but we want to see what those reports have to say," she said.
AML spokesman Keith Guille said Friday the report "is close" to being completed and delivered to the agency.
"Obviously I'm sure everybody is very anxious, as are we," he said.
Contact southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino at (307) 875-5359 or gearino@tribcsp.com
About the project
More than a dozen residents of the "Tree Street" neighborhood in downtown Rock Springs have been battling state government over a controversial mine subsidence project conducted during the summer of 2007.
City officials had been working for years to free up previously undeveloped lands for much-needed housing projects. But most of the vacant lands in the city are located over old, underground mine voids.
State Department of Environmental Quality rules forbid the agency's Abandoned Mine Land Division from conducting any subsidence mitigation work on undeveloped lands. So the city sought and received special permission from Gov. Dave Freudenthal and the AML Division to conduct a special reclamation project within a 61-acre tract identified by city officials as most suitable.
A key component of the project was the use of a pilot reclamation technique known as dynamic compaction.
For three weeks beginning in late July 2007, cranes pounded the ground with 25-ton and 35-ton weights to collapse the underground mine voids on the vacant tract of land, which borders the Tree Street neighborhood. Contractors dropped the huge weights more than 2,000 times before the project was halted in mid-August after complaints from residents.
Homeowners contended the shock waves from the ground pounding shook houses, severely damaged many homes in the area and needlessly accelerated ongoing subsidence in the neighborhood.
AML officials said at the time they would pay for any damage to homes resulting from the dynamic compaction portion of the project.
The state sent in engineers to assess the 19 damaged claims filed by homeowners under a settlement process established by the AML Division. The state then sent settlement offers to each homeowners based on the engineer's report.
So far, only three homeowners have accepted the offers. The other homeowners believe the offer was way too low and would not adequately compensate residents for needed repairs to homes.
In May, state-contracted engineers performed a second round of inspections on the damaged homes at the behest of Wyoming legislators. State lawmakers allocated $120,000 during the 2010 session to pay for the new damage assessments of the homes.
AML officials have said the offers should fairly compensate homeowners for damage form the dynamic compaction. AML officials said they will make new offers based on the latest engineer's report where warranted.