Warren County Assistant Road Manager Eugene Deyamport, left, and Warren County Supervisor David McDonald look over a gaping hole on Newit Vick Drive Saturday morning.(The Vicksburg Paper/MELANIE DUNCAN)

[01/06/02]A break in a water supply line in the Openwood Subdivision last week created a 15-foot-deep chasm Saturday that threatened a roadway and $120,000 in erosion repairs completed in the spring.

Shelby Murray, 800 Newit Vick Drive, said that when he woke up just before dawn Saturday he noticed the water pressure at his home was low and began looking around for the source of the problem. It wasn’t until the sun came up that he saw the hole that had developed overnight near his front yard and less than three feet from the road.

“Then I looked out the window and saw that big hole,” Murray said.

The hole, which apparently had been building through the week but broke through only Saturday, was about 8 feet in diameter.

Murray’s home is adjacent to a drainage channel that crosses Newit Vick Drive. Until last year, when Warren County was awarded a grant through the Emergency Water Shed Protection Program that funded most of the cost to stabilize the area, he had problems with water eating away at his front yard.

While the $120,000 project with the National Resources Conservation Service repaired the erosion damage that had been threatening Murray’s yard, Saturday’s water line break swept away dirt and grass that had been put in to stop those problems.

“At 7:30 (a.m.) it looked like a small creek,” said Warren County District 1 Supervisor David McDonald, who was called shortly after the leak was discovered.

Culkin Water District, which provides water to the subdivision, was called in to repair the leak, and Warren County road crews filled the hole with dirt before rains began Saturday afternoon.

Water had to be cut off to some homes in the area while repairs were made.

McDonald said the county would have to look at making permanent repairs, but that the damaged appeared to have been stopped before tearing up the rock put in place during the conservation project.

“We’ve had a lot of problems right here,” McDonald said.

The conservation service paid 80 percent of the cost for the erosion project eight months ago; the county made up the other 20 percent. McDonald said the county would probably be responsible for the cost of repairs.