Neighborhood residents Braydin O' Neal (left), 14, and Robert Simpson, 12, both of Bowling Green, survey the 900 block of Bryant Way which was closed Sunday, Mar. 9, 2014 due to the opening of a small sinkhole. (Joshua Lindsey/Daily News)

A possible sinkhole has opened on Bryant Way near Shive Lane.

“We received a call about a depression in the pavement. The police helped shut down the road,” Bowling Green Public Works Director Jeff Lashlee said. “The assumption is it’s a sinkhole. We’re going to discover what it is and make repairs. Until we get to digging, we can’t determine the exact cause.”

That part of the road will be closed until the department is confident the problem is solved, Lashlee said.

“We’ll make every effort to make repairs as quickly as possible,” he said. “We have to get the utilities located … to make sure we don’t hit a gas or phone line or something like that.”

Bowling Green has had a number of sinkholes, including one that opened at the National Corvette Museum last month. Eight Corvettes were swallowed into the hole, and efforts are underway to bring them all to the surface. Five of the sports cars had been brought to the surface as of Thursday.

“We certainly have had a few here recently. We had a pretty wet summer and winter. We find a direct correlation to rain and the number of sinkholes,” Lashlee said. “Bowling Green’s geology is prone to this. We make several of these repairs a year.”

When sinkholes appear, public works uses standard repair methods to fix them, Lashlee said.

“We’ll dig to good solid rock. We try to find a hole or crack in the bedrock and bridge over that,” he said. “We’ll fill it up with stone that we compact very tightly and put pavement on top of that.”

To report a problem on city roads, call Bowling Green City Central at 270-393-4444.

“Folks are on a heightened sense of alert,” Lashlee said. “We take calls if it’s something for the city to fix. If it’s on private property, we provide suggestions for people to call.”

Bowling Green isn’t the only area in Kentucky with sinkholes, although it is where they are the most common. Other affected areas include Somerset and areas near Lexington and Frankfort, said Lisa Tolliver, spokesperson for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

“Bowling Green is full of them because of the way the limestone is situated. The limestone is exposed and close to the surface soil. They develop as the limestone is dissolved by surface water,” she said.

“When sinkholes are noticed “they’ll correct them the best they can. They don’t treat them all the same because they’re different.”

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