Commissioners Approve Emergency Sinkhole Repairs at Centre County Sheriff’s Office Parking Lot

Centre County’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved contracts for the emergency repair of a sinkhole that recently opened up at the west parking lot of the Sheriff’s Department in Bellefonte.

Commissioners voted 2-0 to approve a professional services agreement with CMT Labs for engineering services at $150 per hour and a contract of up to $70,500 with LandServ, Inc. to perform the repair work. Commissioner Steve Dershem was absent.

John Franek, county administrator, explained the urgency of the need for a repair.

“We had the county engineer go out to evaluate the severity of the situation and his recommendation was to have a geotechnical analysis performed to see … how deep the sinkhole went,” Franek said.

“There is a history of sinkholes and depressions in the parking lot. This seems to be following that trend. We really want to get in there and get ahead of it before there would be a more significant impact to the area.”

The sinkhole has a narrow opening, but underneath the surface it is a much larger area. On recommendation from CMT’s engineer, the lot is closed until the sinkhole is repaired.

County staff recommended enlisting CMT Labs for the engineering services and CMT recommended that LandServ should do the exploratory work and repair of the sinkhole.

The actual cost to repair the sinkhole is still to be determined, but Franek said $70,500 is expected to be the maximum amount.

“Until we get in there we don’t know to what extent, so this is an absolute worst case scenario which is $70,500,” Franek said. “We’re not expecting that. But they are expecting to have to open up an area that’s possibly 20 feet by 20 feet and 20 feet deep, hoping that they will hit bedrock before they would get to that depth.”