LOCAL

12-foot sinkhole opens overnight in Merrimon Avenue parking lot

Elizabeth Anne Brown
The Citizen-Times
A sinkhole, approximately 12 feet in diameter, in a parking lot on Merrimon Avenue on June 21.

Early in the morning on June 20, Early Girl Eatery general manager Iván Nazario Zapata parked his car, opened the driver's door, and almost stepped into nothingness. 

Overnight, what had started as a "golf course hole" in the employee parking lot next door had widened into a gaping sinkhole. It was a modest five feet across that morning, Early Girl Eatery employees estimate, but by the afternoon of June 21, it was already 12-feet in diameter and 25-30 feet deep. And visibly growing. 

The sinkhole is located in the parking lot of 1010 Merrimon Avenue, formerly the site of Sanesco International Laboratory Testing, and on the same block as the North Asheville Public Library. The building is currently vacant, according to Nazario Zapata. The property owners could not be reached immediately for comment. 

After calling a tow truck to extract a van parked precariously close to the sinkhole's edge, Nazario Zapata reached out to the Asheville Fire Department to ask how to proceed. They informed him that unless the sinkhole immediately threatened the building, there was nothing they could do, according to Nazario Zapata.

According to a Citizen Times analysis in 2016, almost all of the 20 sinkholes Asheville had seen in the previous two decades were caused by underground pipe failures.

When a sinkhole occurs on private property as a result of water or sewage lines, the city has a mixed record on covering the costs — sometimes contributing a percentage of the funds for a repair, and sometimes deciding it's not a public responsibility.

A city spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon. 

To learn more about what sinkholes mean for property owners — and taxpayers — read this treatise on all things "ground collapse" in Asheville by government accountability reporter Joel Burgess.