You can fill a hole. You can fall in a hole. Climb into one, dig one, cover one up.
But how do you lose a hole?
You could ask the Harmar supervisors.
The township’s contractor, Mele & Mele & Sons, appears to have buried a manhole that allows repair crew access in the event of sewerline emergencies near the Allegheny Valley Joint Sewer Authority treatment plant.
But wait … the township engineer, Matt Pitsch, says the contractor is questioning whether there is a manhole at all.
This comedy of errors would be a hilarious if it didn’t mean extra work to track down.
The sewer plant is in the midst of expansion construction, which has meant giant piles of dirt. Apparently, somewhere under one of them is a missing manhole that may or may not exist. The township is turning to the Department of Environmental Protection for help digging up the hole.
Is the area around the sewer plant — or the expansion project — cursed? This isn’t the first weird incident that has prompted calls to DEP.
In February, not one but two excavators belonging to a different contractor for the sewer authority were sucked down into the mud by the Allegheny River all the way up to the cabs. It took until the end of April to pull them out using a crane that had to be brought in by barge.
Harmar is calling the state because this has the potential to be pricey.
“It helps us in our position on who is going to cover the cost if there is an emergency,” township supervisor Chairman Bob Seibert said.
Accidents happen, even at the most carefully vetted and supervised levels. You never know what complications will arise, which is why smart planners build in money to cover the unexpected in the budget.
But these are big, weird problems that seem unpredictable. At the same time, they seem much harder to correct than avoid. Wouldn’t sticking an orange traffic cone on the manhole have kept it from being misplaced?
Now there’s nothing left to do but sit back and see what happens next. Will they find the hole, or will it be lost forever?
