City of Tampa scrambles to repair road cave-ins ahead of hurricane season

City of Tampa scrambles to repair road cave-ins

Ariel Plasencia reports.

TAMPA - City of Tampa officials announced Wednesday that they’re making great progress in repairing massive holes in streets, known as "cave-ins," ahead of hurricane season.

The backstory:

Miles and miles of both wastewater and stormwater pipes sit under Tampa streets. These aging pipes, which are five to 10 feet below ground, can sometimes crack. When water inevitably seeps underground, it can wash surrounding soil into the pipe through the crack, therefore creating a void. That void gets bigger and bigger until the street eventually caves in, resulting in a "cave-in."

Speaking near a cave-in at 15th St. and 2nd Ave near the Gasworx development in Ybor City Wednesday, both wastewater and stormwater leaders gave an update on the city’s efforts to repair hundreds of cave-ins.

Since Hurricane Debby, the wastewater department said city crews fixed more than 540 cave-ins. Two outside contractors were hired and fixed 140 more.

"So we're caught up from the ones from the hurricane," Eric Weiss, City of Tampa wastewater director, said. "We consider ourselves back to our baseline amount, so we have about 75 out there now. Most of those have just happened in the last 30 to 60 days."

Meanwhile, the stormwater department said workers have already repaired 170 cave-ins.

What they're saying:

"We've got at least 170 to go. And the reason I say we've got at least 170 is we still are getting cave-in concerns coming to us, to our customer service teams," Vik Bhide, city of Tampa mobility director, said. "Rest assured, we are working with all of our in-house and contractor teams to address these cave-ins. We will be ready by storm season."

Cave-ins are much deeper than potholes and require a "diagnosis," Bhide added. City officials admitted they are still getting reports of cave-ins that have happened post-hurricanes. Both the stormwater and wastewater departments blamed aging infrastructure for the problem.

"If we have a year similar to last year, where we have two hurricanes -- three potentially adding Debby, and Debby brought in a lot more rain and did a lot of more damage than just the winds -- you're going to see more of the same until we upgrade the baseline infrastructure," Bhide said, when FOX 13 asked about the concern level over future cave-ins. "Much of our stormwater infrastructure is post-war. It hasn't been updated for decades."

Bhide added that there are projects in the works to help with this aging infrastructure and overall flooding, including the PIPES project and the Cypress Street Outfall Project.

What you can do:

To report a cave-in to the city of Tampa, click here.

The Source: FOX 13 reporter Ariel Plasencia conducted the interviews and research for this story.

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