Down In A Hole
So, this is the Newton Street entrance to our parking lot. It’s a giant trash truck that opened up – and fell into – a giant sinkhole. The hole is safe – contrary to early reports, there are no water main or gas lines endangered there.
The truck is now gone, but the hole will be there getting repaired for about a week. Newton Street is closed, but you can drive down Prospect Street to turn into our lot. Exiting our lot is also only out onto Prospect.
We have had to give up about half of our parking lot for the construction vehicles and timbers that are being brought in to shore up the sinkhole, so parking is limited.
If you are coming in tonight, my suggestion is to park a block away and walk in, but you may be able to just pull into our parking lot still. Parking on Newton (across Webster) and walking down Newton St is good. Parking on Prospect St on the Cambridge side of the Webster/Prospect intersection is also good. Parking in the muni lots in front of the Independent or across from Ricky’s Flowers is also an option.
What Happened?
The original sewer from 18xx is a single-walled tube made of bricks. A few bricks eventually fell out of the top of it, opening the dirt above the brick pipe to be exposed to the flow of sewage and storm water overflow. Every time that pipe filled up (every heavy rain) it surged up out of that small hole and eroded away a bit more dirt that got swept down the sewer to the outflow.
After enough time, it undermined the whole street. This is not surprising given how often the storm sewers overflow in Union Square.
The result now is that there’s a section of the old sewer that is open, but filled nearly to clogged with dirt. The excavators have exposed the sewer and found the breach. Now they are working to shore up the sinkhole, remove the sediment from the sewer pipe. After that they will repair the sewer pipe, then fill the hole and repair the street surface.
I’ll update y’all Sunday night on how it’s looking.