“The intersection down here fell in 1977, the fella’s garage fell in 1975, and now we have this mine subsidence in 2016,” said Hooversville Council Member Jack Gaudlip.

 

Gaudlip said it seems to have happened overnight.  One of the two main roads in a little section of Hooversville Borough caved in about a week ago.  They spent $5,000 to fill it the way the Department of Environmental Protection told them, but it did not work. 

 

The problem is all the way down the hill, underneath Myers Street, is an abandoned mine shaft.  They keep filling the hole with rocks, but the rocks keep sliding down to fill the empty spaces. 

 

“Where we’re standing is on a place that’s been mined out,” Gaudlip said. “Right where you’re standing.  We could just disappear.”

 

The entrance to the old mine is in the woods next to the road, and it winds around under most of the town.  Gaudlip said he is even starting to see parts of his yard dip in. 

 

“So we’re just mined out all around us,” he said. “It’s really not a pretty picture.”

 

This problem is bigger than mine subsidence, however.  The school bus cannot take its normal route; it now comes up Ober Street.  This hill is too steep for the bus to drive up in the winter. 

 

“They can’t come up this hill with the vehicles,” Gaudlip said. “They have to go around this way. There’s no other way out. We go down that way, we come up around this way.”

 

Plus, along either side of Myers Street runs the town water and sewer lines.  DEP was in town Monday morning to take a look at the problem, but could not give a timeline of when it would be fixed. 

 

“It could either be a couple of weeks, a couple of months, couple of years,” Gaudlip said. “They don’t know. They have 32 counties to cover with mine subsidence.”

 

The plan until then is to try again. 

 

“I guess we’re going to try to fill it in again?” Gaudlip said, shrugging. “See what happens. That’s all we can do.”