Pothole becomes giant sinkhole in Bloomfield Township

BLOOMFIELD TWP., Mich. (WJBK) - What started as a pothole on a street in Bloomfield township has become a giant sinkhole.

It's an eyesore and headache. The crater on Devonbrook Drive near Telegraph in Bloomfield Township is a bane to homeowners.

"That's what you look out at, every single morning," says resident Jeff Jucewicz. "Road barricades, netting and barrels - and a huge crater."

"We can't come to our house via Telegraph," says Harris VanCleaf. "We have to go around to Hickory Grove to get to our property."

It's long overdue for a fix.

"That did not happen overnight," says Jucewicz. "In fact, the barrels and the netting have been up for a year and half now."

It all began in 2016 when it was just your normal pothole. The Oakland County Road Commission tried filling it over and over again, but it kept growing. Those were signs of a bigger problem.

"Last year we started to work with the Department of Environmental Quality to get a permit to replace the culvert," says Craig Bryson, Oakland County Road Commission. "Because it is a waterway we have to have a DEQ permit to work in there."

But the road commission ran into trouble with MDEQ and that delayed the long term fix, allowing the crater to deepen and widen from curb to curb. 

"The road commission is getting a bad rap when they really, truly have been trying to fix it,” says VanCleaf. “It's just that they have to follow protocol.”

And the tyranny of red tape is leaving residents seeing red - or more fittingly, orange. But that should only last for another month.

MDEQ has given Oakland County the greenlight to fix the street, meaning a resolution within four to six weeks.