Emma Ockerman

Detroit Free Press

The massive sinkhole threatening a Fraser neighborhood will force the shutdown of 15 Mile Road for months as city and county agencies scramble for solutions, officials said Monday.

Residents packed the council chambers of Fraser City Hall Monday morning to get an update on the yawning sinkhole that has partially destroyed one home at the end of Eberlein Drive at 15 Mile and forced the evacuation of 22 residences in all.

What they learned was shocking: the 100-foot wide, 250-foot long sinkhole – discovered at about 6:20 a.m. the morning of Christmas Eve – is considered to be even larger than a 2004 sinkhole that shut down part of 15 Mile Road for 10 months and cost $53 million to repair.

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This sinkhole could take just as long – if not longer – to fix officials said.

While some residents have been allowed back inside to collect personal belongings, it could be another two weeks yet for the rest of them to return home.

While the cause of the sinkhole is still undetermined, it has been traced to a collapsed interceptor for an 11-foot-wide sewer line between Utica and Hayes Roads, approximately 45 feet below the surface.

A gas main, water main and sanitary sewer tank all were affected by the sinkhole, forcing the city to shut off utilities to the impacted area.

Engineers from Anderson, Eckstein and Westrick (AEW), a civil engineering and geographic information systems consulting group based in Shelby Township, are working to secure the situation and keep raw sewage from flooding basements.

“The number one objective of this project was basically to make sure that with the collapse occurring, we don’t have any significant basement backups,” said Scott Lockwood, executive vice president at AEW and lead engineer for Fraser.

Lockwood and Louis Urban, senior project engineer for AEW and project manager for the Fraser incident, both answered questions at the emergency meeting Monday.

Lockwood said the engineers are installing bypass pumps, and engineers said they would consider dumping into the Clinton River as a last-resort effort if faced with an overflow situation.

Still, later that day Brian Baker, the chief deputy commissioner for Macomb County Public Works Commissioner-elect Candice Miller, said two pumps had to be bypassed to drains that deposit into the Clinton River following heavy rainfall Monday afternoon. The limited release of sewage was expected to end later in the evening.

There have been reports of sewage backing up into basements, Baker confirmed, though those appear to be unrelated to the bypasses, as the residents are not along the same line.

“We will get through this, we will be OK and we will go home,” Fraser Mayor Joe Nichols told residents at the meeting.

Because Eberlein is a dead-end road, engineers are considering a temporary roadway behind 15300 and 15370 Eberlein Dr., and another for the nearby Fraser Activity Center on Hidden Pine Drive while residents are unable to enter through 15 Mile. Lockwood said he’s hopeful those access points will be ready within the next two weeks.

Ted Leszkiewicz, who lives at the southern end of Eberlein, said he moved into his home just one month before the 2004 sinkhole. This time around, he said it kept his eight-year-old daughter from spending Christmas Day at home.

“My daughter, she was devastated to be ripped out of her home on Christmas Eve,” Leszkiewicz said. “But she’s doing great. We’re probably going to go Up North for a while and get away from the whole situation.”

Have any questions about the sinkhole? Tweet @eockerman or email eockerman@freepress.com.