Public works officials spotted and barricaded a sinkhole in front of Eastpointe Middle School, just in time to prevent any students getting near it.

That 8-foot-deep void is one of two new sinkholes in Macomb County that required emergency repairs recently.

Miller said the new sinkholes added to the costly repair for the notoriously big one in Fraser that opened up on Christmas Eve of 2016 and gave dramatic evidence that more must be spent on the region's aging sewer systems.

The Eastpointe sinkhole was discovered late last week under a stretch of sidewalk in front of the school on Kelly Road, according to the office of Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller. The sidewalk was blocked off and an engineering team has been at the site, Miller said Tuesday in a news release.

The sinkhole is near a manhole on a branch sewer pipe of the Stephens Relief Drain, a large east-west storm drain that runs under Stephens Road and that serves Eastpointe and St. Clair Shores before emptying into Lake St. Clair.

About 10 miles away in Fraser, an 8-foot-diameter sinkhole opened up on Kingston Street in a residential neighborhood south of 14 Mile Road and west of Utica Road. The hole is over the Priest Drain storm sewer, leading officials to believe there may be a crack in the drain. Part of Kingston Street is closed during the repair.

“Our underground infrastructure is aging in place. This is why we are actively working to inspect it and to work on preventative maintenance," she said.

In Eastpointe and Fraser, local public works crews helped county workers to pinpoint the problems, Miller said, adding: “We are particularly thankful that the sinkhole near the Eastpointe Middle School was identified before the first day of school so no students were injured.”

A spokeswoman for Eastpointe Community Schools said the sinkhole did not interfere with the half-day of school on Tuesday and would not bother students on Wednesday's first full day of the school year.

The new sinkholes are not related and each repair should take about two weeks, said Dan Heaton, communications manager for the Macomb County Public Works Office. The combined cost, to be paid from separate funds tied to each of the drain systems involved, is expected to be less than $50,000, officials said.

Judge dismisses earlier claims

The massive sinkhole in Fraser that began in late 2016, destroying a home and creating a pit the size of a football field on 15 Mile Road, cost about $75 million to fix. It was fully repaired by December 2017, when 15 Mile Road reopened in the area.

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Yet it was back in the news this week. Miller announced that a judge dismissed claims stemming from the sinkhole that had been asserted in a lawsuit by a sewer district that serves numerous Oakland County communities, as well as some in Macomb County, against a connected sewer district that serves only Macomb County towns.

Miller, in a news release, called the lawsuit “a very expensive, unnecessary exercise.” Macomb's side spent $150,000 on legal fees while Oakland's legal costs were paid by an insurer, according to officials involved.

Now that the case has been dismissed, Miller said, her department “can put all of our focus on negotiations with the insurance carrier, so we can recoup our expenses in the costly repair of the 15 Mile Road interceptor.”

The case began early this year when Miller was outvoted 2-1 about whether to file the lawsuit by the board of the OMID — the Oakland Macomb Interceptor Drainage District. Outvoting her on that board were its two other members: the boss of Oakland County’s drains, Oakland Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash, and a representative of the Michigan Department of Agriculture who sits on that cross-county drain board.

That 2-1 vote resulted in OMID, the Oakland-Macomb district, suing MIDD — the Macomb Interceptor Drainage District, which also has a three-person board, of which Miller is the chair.

At issue was the daunting $75-million tab for repairing Fraser’s giant sinkhole. Although contractors have been paid off, the various parties involved are trying to ease the burden on their respective rate payers — people whose water and sewer bills are set to include charges to pay off the sinkhole repair bonds for years to come.

The MIDD is a district established when its big interceptor sewer was purchased from Detroit Water and Sewer about 10 years ago. Some critics have said that the Detroit system failed to properly maintain this part of its network before selling it to suburbanites.

Nash said Tuesday that the judge’s dismissal of the case does not settle the issues involved.

Both sides said that now, before taking further steps, they must wait for an insurance company to decide on Macomb County’s claim for coverage of the sinkhole repair cost.

Contact Ann Zaniewski at 313-222-6594 or azaniewski@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @AnnZaniewski.