Wyoming needs to help Tree Street residents

It's high time for common sense to prevail and for the state of Wyoming to finally offer reasonable compensation to residents of Rock Springs' Tree Street neighborhood for damages to their homes.

For the fourth straight legislative session, more than a dozen residents have turned to lawmakers for help, but none seems to be forthcoming.

Lawmakers who have taken the time to tour the houses in the area have generally expressed support for the residents, who claim their homes were damaged by the state's experimental dynamic compaction project in July 2007. So did then-gubernatorial candidate Matt Mead, who examined the damage a year ago and said he was "stunned" by what he saw.

Last February, Mead followed up his visit with a letter to the residents that noted, "I see the considerable time the state has spent on this matter, and certainly all parties need finality and a conclusion ... The time for resolution is now."

We couldn't agree more. Now, in his capacity as the state's chief executive, we encourage Mead to do everything in his power to resolve the problems.

It's hindsight, of course, but it's no wonder the dynamic compaction process failed to work and has been blamed for making the Tree Street residents' lives nightmarish.

In an effort to free vacant lands that Rock Springs could use to build affordable housing, the new subsidence process repeatedly dropped 25- and 35-ton weights over undermined areas to collapse the underground mine voids on a tract of land near the Tree Street neighborhood. Contractors dropped the huge weights more than 2,000 times before the project was halted in mid-August 2007 after complaints from residents.

Some homes in the area have continued to experience damage, which owners attribute to accelerated subsidence from the dynamic compaction.

After offering homeowners incredibly low settlements, which all but three refused, 15 owners filed a lawsuit against the state of Wyoming last July when no other offers materialized. The state finally agreed to hire a Colorado engineering firm to reinspect the houses, but the company's report last November concluded it is "plausible but not likely" that the mine subsidence project damaged the homes.

For more than three and a half years, the state's focus has been solely on trying to establish if it could be blamed for the damages. But now that the engineer's report is finished, it's time for the state to finally recognize that whether or not the dynamic compaction process is the likely cause of the damage, the problems the homeowners have experienced are still the result of underground mine voids that should be covered using Abandoned Mine Lands funds.

The federal AML program taxes coal production to raise money to clean up abandoned coal mine sites. The damaged Tree Street homes are the perfect example of the type of project the money should be used for by Wyoming, which has received about $600 million in AML funds since 1997.

The only hitch is that state rules do not allow the Wyoming AML Division to purchase land or homes. So the guidelines need to be changed to better match federal AML standards, which are looser and more subject to interpretation, as several Sweetwater County representatives suggested last year. In the short budget session, however, the issue was not introduced.

The delay in making the homeowners' whole has been a travesty and an embarrassment to the state. Wyoming needs to right this wrong and, as Mead said last year, make certain no others will ever have to "endure this misery."

COMMENTS:
1.SDB said on: January 24, 2011, 10:54 am
I'm not an engineer and my knowledge in such things is limited, but my common sense made me question the idea of dropping 25 & 35 ton weights that close to town back when the idea was first proposed. I mean, that is a significant amount of weight and the whole GOAL of the project was to collaps underground tunnels. Wouldn't it make sense that this action would reverberate (or whatever the technical term is) throughout the ground of quite a ways? Doesn't is make sense that said reverberation would have an affect on nearby structures?

Again, I'm engineering is not my field of study, that's just one commoners take on the subject. Either way, those responsible for the weight dropping owe these homeowners fort the damage done. These people lived in that neighborhood before the hairbrained idea of collapsing the mine shafts in this way was proposed. There was no way they could have predicted this.

Todd does bring up a good point though...what about the contractor's insurance covering some of the damage. Certainly a contractor wouldn't have taken the job on without researching the right way to do such a thing. If they did, maybe they should bare some of the responsibility.

2.Todd said on: January 24, 2011, 6:06 am
State officials have not done themselves proud in this situation. It is way past time to pay up. If they had used a contrator with insurance it would have been taken care of several years ago.

3.notawyonative said on: January 26, 2011, 11:47 am
So who hired the guy to do the survey? If the state of wyoming did, I would not believe a word he says. They need to get a court appointed professional who is neutral to the situation

4.chillywilly said on: January 29, 2011, 9:43 am
So Mac thinks it is OK if a person's lifelong sweat and toil to better oneself is destroyed and stolen from you so the rest of society can benefit. That does sound like socialism or communism to me. I am one of the people who has received this benificent treatment from the state of wyoming. Here is the truth that the state won't allow to be spoken: (1).There was no insurance offered to anyone in the tree streets area until after the damage had been done. (2). Subsidence maps of the city were altered from being labeled as high risk to low risk so that dynamic commpaction could be done. (3) 2700 richter scale 4 earthquakes in 3 weeks. It shattered the sidewalks, foundations and concrete slabs upon which our residences had sat undisturbed for30 to a hundred years.(4) Personally, now my sewer drainage does not work as it should due to the subsidence and ground movement and is costing me lots of dollars just in 2-3 roto rootings a year. Mac, do you like cleaning #### off floors and walls after a roto rooter has been working in your basement? I am only the second owner of a home built in the 70's and this house is coming apart around me I had 6 of the best state employee engineers look at my house over a two year time and not a single one of those worthless, supposed engineers noted or at least told me about it, that the furnace natural gas supply line had dropped onto the exhaust manifold for that furnace, crushing the exhaust line and quite frankly my wife and I sat on top of a potential bomb for 3 years until I noticed it and immediately, at some significant cost, rectified the situation. We had bought this house 3 years prior to dynamic compaction,after having the required mortgage assessment and I had inquired of the mortgage representative who I had used before about subsidence insurance and was told no I did not need it where we were moving. I had subsidence insurance at the other house and it is not a big deal, as you pay $300 a year and that supposedly covers you for subsidence.
If not for the help a dearly beloved,sorely missed,and now departed Jeff Gearino who won major awards for his reporting on this fiasco, we would probably not even be at this point. The state has lied, stolen, and refused any honorable attempt at resolution. Liars and thieves, that is the makeup of wyoming state government officials & dept heads.
I know this is a long winded rant but it only covers the tip of the iceberg of what tree street residents are having to put up with while a lying and thieving state government stonewalls us. We all met every condition the state put in front of us at our own costs: new assessments, now we have to buy subsidence insurance that is not worth the paper it is written on as the state denies there are related subsidence problems, we have all had to pay for bids to repair, submitted them to the state and then get lowballed pennies on the dollar. Finally at the three year mark, when statute of limitations regulations came into effect, we were forced to file a suit. The state has been most dishonorable in their dealings with us, and what really galls me is that the new governor has put the same incompetent back in charge of wyoming DEQ and praised the good job he has done. What a bunch of boot licking. I could go on and on about damages that I and other tree streeters are dealing with, but it would take pages. Wyoming DEQ is out of control, is lead by incompetents. Polluted water tables now in Pavillion, ozone alerts and poisonus air in Pinedale, millions and millions of dollars being poured down rat holes in the name of subsidence grouting. Watch out Gillette, they are coming your way.