Dig confirms what’s below Streator sinkhole

Streator resident Doug Ramzey called his property Friday “a sacrificial lamb.”

In 2004, Ramzey discovered his yard at 404 Bluff St. was sinking when he still was renting the property, but after buying the home in 2012, he looked into it further.

He discovered a nearly 10-foot-deep sinkhole and after recently probing further, he discovered a concrete slab that was about 26 inches by 75 inches.

A mine expert with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources said earlier this month that he believed the mysterious hole could be an undocumented air vent to the C. W. & V. #1 Mine, which operated from 1885 to 1891.

Further digging on Friday with heavier equipment, however, revealed the brick-lined sinkhole in Ramzey’s backyard was an abandoned sewer drop with pipes leading to a closed mine.

“It’s not part of the mining operation,” said David Kimmle, with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Office of Mines and Minerals Division of Abandoned Mined Land Reclamation. “It appears several homes were connected to it with several pipes going to it and it would drop into the mine.”

A crew from Joe Hatzer & Son, Inc. filled the hole with concrete to stabilize the land. The yard will have to be monitored periodically and the find will have to be shared in any future sales of the house, Ramzey said.

Ramzey was able to obtain the cover plate on the slab, which had to be removed to perform the first dig. The slab was removed from the concrete, and while it didn’t clean up as well as he had hoped, Ramzey learned it was a cast mold, not welded, meaning it must have been created at a later time.

“It will need to be cleaned up more, because you can’t read it,” Ramzey said. “It appears it was a cover to the sewer drop. It’s really heavy.”

Ramzey first told his landlord about the sinking yard in 2004.

Since then, the ground has sunk about 0.75 inches, enough to cause an air leak in his sliding glass door and creating cracks in both the home and garage foundations.

Ramzey believes a single event may have caused the sliding door and garage damage, because he realized it created a straight line across his property.

“It was all in a perfect line for 80 feet,” Ramzey said. “It makes me believe it occurred simultaneously with a single event.”

What that single event may have been is undetermined.

Ramzey was reflective of the whole process on Friday as contracting crews, a mining expert and friend all watched the dig and filling in of the hole in his backyard.

“A sewer is not as exciting as an air vent to a mine,” Ramzey said. “I feel like I’ve done a lot of research since this happened and learned a lot.

“My house was a sacrificial lamb.”