MARK WAITE / PVT Cracks in the walls and windows off kilter are the most obvious sign of soil problems in this house fenced off at 2421 Hacienda Street. MARK WAITE / PVT Relatives of a resident living at 2480 Park Ridge Avenue look over a fissure in front of his house that links up with sinkholes in the street that opened up after the hard rain last Friday. Advertisement

Misery loves company, is a worn-out saying a homeowner living at 2480 Park Ridge Avenue, who preferred not to be identified, can surely understand. But he lives in an area a soil engineer called "ground zero" for soil fissures.

The unfortunate homeowner, who said he built his home a year and a half ago, awoke last Saturday morning to find huge sinkholes on the street and fissures in his front yard. Park Ridge Avenue is closed north of Hacienda Drive and the only access to his driveway is from the other entrance from Feather Street.

A water hose extends to his house from a neighbor's property. One of the gaping sinkholes exposes a water line running up Park Ridge Avenue.

Around the corner a house with a cracked exterior is still fenced off at 2421 Hacienda.

"From our point of view, there's nothing we had to do with it," said Paul Burris, regional vice-president of operations for Utilities Inc. of Central Nevada, the local water and sewer utility. "It was not caused by a water main break."

The National Weather Service observer in Pahrump reported 2.7 inches of rain after Friday's storm, almost 60 percent of the town's average annual rainfall.

Storms in November 2004 created structural failure on 400 to 600 feet of pavement on Hacienda Street around the corner and opened a huge sinkhole east of Ranchita Way. A water main also broke, causing flooding of the road. More rain in December 2004 and January 2005 further inundated the area, in an unusually rainy winter. A report by engineers at the time noted 35 locations with soil failure between Hacienda Street and Gamebird Road.

At the time, Nye County Public Works Director Samson Yao estimated the price tag to fix that erosion would be $192,000. The plan called for replacing 10 feet of the fine-grained soil with low, permeable imported soil for a 400- to 600-foot patch of road.

The county plans to install a geo-synthetic material to line the bar ditches on Park Ridge Avenue after the latest damage, in an attempt to get water to pass through that area, Nye County Road Foreman Dave Fanning said.

Utilities Inc. crews were re-compacting the soil around the water line, he said. The road could reopen in a few days. The estimated cost of the repairs could be roughly $100,000.

Lawsuits have swirled around construction in Calvada Unit Two, the section of town south of Highway 160 west of Homestead Road. A residence at 2421 Hacienda St. is still fenced off with bad cracking on the exterior, windows out of kilter and other damage, the most obvious sign of the soil problems.

While one real estate company representative, who also didn't want to be identified, said she wouldn't sell property in that area, others fill the void and sell land.

Real estate professionals last fall convinced Nye County officials not to sponsor a ordinance tightening up requirements on soil disclosures. Engineers are already required to certify the soil is suitable for the home foundation and septic system. The septic inspection came after a hard battle fought by a citizens group in 2003, claiming there were 89 septic failures in the area just south of Park Ridge Avenue, although the state Board of Health only found four actual failures.

Soil engineer Dave DuPont, president of Pahrump Engineering, said many parts of Pahrump Valley have fissures, which are related to different fault lines.

"As rainfall occurs, rain gets inside those and it starts to hollow out the fissure bigger and bigger," DuPont said.

There is a fault line intersecting near the corner of Dandelion Street and Homestead Road running northwest to southeast, DuPont said. The lowering of the water table valleywide and the loose soil in that area compounds the problem, he said.

"Over time water has worked its way into the fissure and created a basic void below the surface you're not even seeing and eventually the roof starts to fall in and the rain we had may have been the last straw causing the collapse," DuPont said. "Unfortunately that area of town is very susceptible to it.

"In Calvada Unit Two there are some very loose soils. Those become very susceptible to having fissure development. We nicknamed it 'ground zero' because that's the worst of the worst."

Homeowners can aggravate the situation by landscaping or having faulty septic lines that funnel water into the fissures, DuPont said.

"Pahrump has much worse soil conditions than we do in Vegas," DuPont said. "But it doesn't mean you can't build on it, it's all due to the water."

The problems on Hacienda Street in late 2004 arose after a basement excavation across the street filled up with water, percolated down to the fissure and opened it up, DuPont said.

DuPont said he can't blame the builder of the Park Rdige home, who probably didn't know a home was being constructed right near a fissure. He said there's examples of homes destroyed by subsidence, like one on Dandelion Street just south of Homestead, but nearby there are perfect houses.

"There's probably lots of fissures but no one lives around them, no one notices them. But as you get more development, you're going to get more and more of these occur," DuPont said.

The fissures wouldn't be detected in a typical soils test for the foundation and septic tank, DuPont said. He suggested homeowners take precautions like making sure their septic fields are maintained and their septic lines level. He also promoted xeriscaping instead of grass lawns as watering landscaping could seep into a fissure.

The homeowner at 2480 Park Ridge Avenue can at least take comfort in the fact the sinkhole opened up in front of his house, without destroying his foundation.