LITTLE ROCK — Little Rock is moving to condemn and raze a house whose owners blame the city for a collapsed driveway and sliding foundation that occurred after a drainage pipe running through the property failed.
The city has a drainage easement for the pipe across 126 White Oak Lane, a 1960sera house on a property that neighbors have complained about for years as the source of flooding and drainage problems on their street west of Keightley Drive.
Last year, several drainage culverts in older neighborhoods collapsed. City officials helped one elderly couple fix a large sinkhole in their Chester Street yard while saying the city is only responsible for maintaining or fixing drainage systems that are in public easements.
But Little Rock has washed its hands of the problem on White Oak Lane, saying the property owner, Roy Burks, is responsible for fixing the drainage pipe because someone built a retaining wall and driveway over the underground culvert well before it collapsed in the late 1990s.
“He collapsed the pipe,” assistant Public Works director Ronny Loe told city directors at a recent Board of Directors meeting.
In an interview last year, Burks, who bought the house in 1976, denied that the retain-ing wall and driveway caused the collapse. He said the driveway is 15 feet above the drain and the wall sits atop reinforced concrete.
The city’s 2002 inspection showed that the culvert, on a dip in the road, wasn’t properly constructed years before he bought the house. The abstract says the subdivision developer used dirt instead of gravel to cover the drainage system, Burks said in an interview Friday.
“When the city accepted their streets, they accepted those drains as part of the infrastructure of Little Rock. When they accepted them, they accepted the responsibility of looking after them and maintaining them,” said Burks, who now lives in his wife’s hometown of Rogers.
Neither the city nor Burks ever attempted to fix the pipe.
Discussions about fixing the drainage problem broke down in 2002.
The city offered to run a new line through an adjacent lot that Burks owned, but Burks said that option would render the lot useless. The city then shied away from another option to run a new line through the retaining wall for fear it would damage the house, he said.
The flooding worsened after a 2002 inspection when a worker plugged up the drain, Burks said. Neighbors say flooding worsened even more after the back end of the driveway collapsed a few years ago.
Now water flows over the driveway instead of through the culvert underneath, flooding the yard and the house. The multistory home is unlivable. Burks previously said the constant flooding made him move about three years ago.
“They’ve destroyed my house. I want them to pay me for the house and pay the cost of demolition,” Burks said.
The city intends to raze the house, but charge Burks for the estimated $25,000 cost of the work, a substantial portion of the city’s annual demolition budget of just over $200,000. Little Rock would place a lien on the property for the bill, which would have to be paid before the land could ever change hands.
Burks doesn’t know how he can stop the city or make Little Rock take responsibility for the damage. He would like to sue, he said, but he hasn’t been able to find a lawyer willing to take his case.
City Attorney Tom Carpenter told city directors he anticipates a lawsuit whether they vote to condemn or not. If the city favors the demolition, Burks might sue. If the city doesn’t raze the home, he said, neighbors might sue because of the city’s inaction despite being aware of the safety hazard.
“That house is sliding off,” Carpenter said.
An engineer’s report shows the house leaning toward a ravine in the back. Photographs shown at the board meeting revealed cracks in the house’s brick exterior.
City directors are scheduled to vote on the demolition at their next meeting Dec. 7. Burks said he won’t be at the meeting to contest the condemnation because his daughter, who lives in Virginia, is expecting twins around that time.
Another Little Rock resident has sued the city over property damage that occurred after a drainage pipe under her Beechwood home collapsed in the middle of a storm last year. The culvert was built as a private drainage system, but it connects to a city drainage system, and Little Rock received an easement in 1968 from a previous owner to inspect, repair and maintain the culvert for the duration of any work done or proposed to be done by the city.
A federal judge in July agreed to transfer the lawsuit against the city, the Little Rock Sanitary Sewer Committee and various city department heads back to Pulaski County Circuit Court. The owner has since demolished the Heights home, which had been expanded over the driveway that was built on top of the culvert.
The collapses last year prompted Little Rock to review old drainage maps. Officials found nearly 240 houses, sheds and other buildings that they believe are near or above drainage pipes that snake through the city. The city is going through the list of properties to determine how many structures are on top of drainage pipes.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 11/27/2010