Underground caverns cause trouble in Auburn NY construction

[Wayne Harrison]

Auburn City Hall. The building is cooled and heated using a geo-thermal system that taps into underground water, which maintains a constant temperature year round.

Seeing the success of that project, city leaders also looked at other sites that could benefit from work and soon they focused on the building housing police and fire departments, a building in need of a new system.

“It's supposed to provide us with year round heat and cooling. It will temperature control the entire building,” said Gary Giannotta, Auburn Police Chief.

All had gone well at city hall, so, as they began the project here at the Auburn Police and Fire Department building, they expected few problems. All of that changes once they began to dig.

The drills would dig down 400 feet. All was going well until the drills hit 220 feet and then just dropped. They began digging again to 280 feet and the same thing happened. And these weren't tiny voids.

‘They don't know exactly what it is. They did drop a camera down there but couldn't tell the extent of the cavern. The cavern is so big,” Giannotta said.

And that was a problem.


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