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Carriage Hills subdivision resident Tim Gurn talks with Porter County Engineer Michael Novotney about drainage issues there. A sinkhole earlier this year was so bad the tow company had to use a crane to get the vehicles out. Fortunately, no one was injured. It wasn't the subdivision's first sinkhole and might not be its last.

Carriage Hills resident Greg Edmonds shows a cellphone photo of one of the sinkholes, now repaired, near him.

VALPARAISO — Porter County is all set to address drainage issues that have caused large sinkholes in the Carriage Hills subdivision. There’s just one catch — funding for the costly repairs.

Riding Shotgun/DNR Conservation Officer Tyler Brock

County Engineer Michael Novotney had hoped work would be started next month and finished in November, but the Porter County Council hasn’t approved the American Rescue Plan Act ordinance approved by the Board of Commissioners. Now there’s no way construction would begin before next year.

The commissioners’ ARPA plan set aside $1.25 million for the project, but without the council appropriating the money, it can’t be spent.

Novotney, meeting with residents, put that cost in perspective for them. The county’s entire annual budget for stormwater projects isn’t even enough to cover it.

“I honestly thought I had that money secured last fall,” he said.

The council was expected to vote on the ARPA plan Tuesday night, despite a 5-2 vote at its last meeting against forcing that item to be on the agenda. Carriage Hills residents planned to show up to make sure their concerns are heard.

The drainage fix involves replacing a failed sewer line that wasn’t installed correctly when the subdivision was built just over 20 years ago.

“We have the wherewithal to design this project and really give you what you really should have had since this subdivision was built,” Novotney said. “This subdivision shouldn’t have been built the way it was.”

A corrugated plastic pipe that was too small to start with was buried 16 feet underground. The weight off all that soil was too much for the pipe, Novotney said.

“In this case, the storm sewer system is so far gone there’s not much we can do but replace the whole thing,” he said.

“Believe it or not, we have these problems all through the county,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more work than our budget could ever possibly pay for.”

Novotney promised his team would frequently monitor driveways there this fall for signs of a sinkhole forming.

The county is considering buying materials for the project in advance to make sure the supply-chain problems don’t stall work next year, he said.

Resident Heidi Edmonds is eager for repairs to begin. “We actually had the first sinkhole in the neighborhood,” in 2016, she said. “It was minimal at first.”

Her husband, Greg, filled the whole with black dirt, then realized the following year there was a problem. It kept needing more and more dirt.

In 2018, a metal pipe was put in to protect the driveway.

Dave Schneider has a Ring doorbell video of a sinkhole happening. He offered to show it to Novotney, but Novotney declined. He’s already seen plenty of evidence of the problems there.

Heidi Edmonds is disappointed by the response from county officials. She’s “very upset, angry, after being told by (Commissioner) Jim Biggs that the driveway would be done by October,” she said. Biggs is also upset about the delay.

“Every year, they’ve told us, so far, oh next year,” resident Paul Skolka said.

His sinkhole “was like a monster. It was five, six feet maybe,” he said. Skolka spent about $7,000 on backfill.

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Doug Ross, an award-winning writer, has been covering Northwest Indiana for more than 35 years, including more than a quarter of a century at The Times.

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Bringing employees up to par with their counterparts elsewhere would cost a bit more than $2.5 million, an 8.72% increase overall.

County Coroner Cyndi Dykes asked for an additional $100,000 for autopsies through the end of the year – 490,000 to pay for the pathologist and $10,000 for Northwest Health Porter’s fees.

The county’s ARPA steering committee and four subcommittees devoted 25 meetings and more than 80 hours to the process of reviewing requests for funding, County Auditor Vicki Urbanik said.

Carriage Hills subdivision resident Tim Gurn talks with Porter County Engineer Michael Novotney about drainage issues there. A sinkhole earlier this year was so bad the tow company had to use a crane to get the vehicles out. Fortunately, no one was injured. It wasn't the subdivision's first sinkhole and might not be its last.

Carriage Hills resident Greg Edmonds shows a cellphone photo of one of the sinkholes, now repaired, near him.

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