Part of state Route 82 bypass sinks away
Westbound right lane closed until further notice
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HOWLAND -- A large sinkhole, the size of a compact car, opened up just after 7 a.m. Tuesday in the berm off the westbound lanes of the state Route 82 bypass just west of the East Market Street exit.
By early afternoon, crews from the Ohio Department of Transportation District 4 office in Akron were on the scene, filling the hole.
"As of right now, we are filling the sinkhole with concrete as a temporary fix, and we are currently looking into a long-term solution to this issue," said Ray Marsch, public information officer for ODOT District 4.
Marsch said the westbound driving lane of the bypass will remain closed until further notice. He said the culvert failed, which may have been caused by the recent heavy rains in the wetlands that are prevalent in the area.
"This is a freak occurrence, but they have been getting a lot of rain in that marshy area lately," Marsch said.
The sinkhole, which measured about 8 feet by 10 feet, was the second to appear in Howland Township within a year.
In early July 2019, a sinkhole 12 feet deep and large enough to "swallow a car" formed in a parking lot near Gander Outdoors at the Eastwood Mall complex off state Route 46, several miles away from the site of Tuesday's phenomenon.
The cause of the July 2019 sinkhole was the breaking of a 60-inch storm sewer pipe, according to Eastwood Mall officials, causing the ground to give way. The 30-year-old sewer pipe was made of corrugated metal, instead of concrete, and had buckled. The breakage was caused by flooding due to heavy rains and storm drainage backup at the mall complex, officials had said.
A maintenance man noted a smaller sinkhole had formed in the spring of 2019 near McDonald's in the parking lot of the same plaza and was repaired.
Sinkholes are common in areas where below the land surface lies limestone, carbonate rock, salt beds or rocks that can be dissolved naturally by circulating groundwater, according to the U.S. Geological Survey website. Eastern Ohio is made up largely of "evaporite rocks" salt and gypsum, which are associated with collapses.