Post by L Roebuck on May 29, 2007 12:16:05 GMT -5
Sinkholes worsen with development
Scarcity of land leads to building in trouble spots
As Middle Tennessee's population grows, communities have increasingly found they had better be wary of the land.
With much of the Midstate's best land already built on, developers increasingly are turning to areas known to have sinkholes, a result of erosion that weakens the limestone base created billions of years ago when shallow seas receded.
Costly damage can result, and lives can be at risk. Walls of a building can crack, or land can open into underground chasms that will swallow a home or a chunk of highway.
There are remedies, such as keeping construction at a distance from sinkholes and not cutting trees and other plants around the dips in the earth. Some developers try to fill the holes with rocks.
Often no one sees any problem coming. That was the case for Troy and Yvonne Givens of Portland, who awoke one November morning in 2005 to find their home twisted and groaning as a section fell in bursts into a hole that had opened in the earth.
Full Story: Tennessean
Graphic: Sinkholes in the Midstate
Graphic: How Sinkholes Form
Scarcity of land leads to building in trouble spots
As Middle Tennessee's population grows, communities have increasingly found they had better be wary of the land.
With much of the Midstate's best land already built on, developers increasingly are turning to areas known to have sinkholes, a result of erosion that weakens the limestone base created billions of years ago when shallow seas receded.
Costly damage can result, and lives can be at risk. Walls of a building can crack, or land can open into underground chasms that will swallow a home or a chunk of highway.
There are remedies, such as keeping construction at a distance from sinkholes and not cutting trees and other plants around the dips in the earth. Some developers try to fill the holes with rocks.
Often no one sees any problem coming. That was the case for Troy and Yvonne Givens of Portland, who awoke one November morning in 2005 to find their home twisted and groaning as a section fell in bursts into a hole that had opened in the earth.
Full Story: Tennessean
Graphic: Sinkholes in the Midstate
Graphic: How Sinkholes Form
