BETHLEHEM – A 23-foot crack in the earth off Delaware Avenue abutting the Normans Kill poses an “imminent threat to public safety,” the town of Bethlehem said in a statement Sunday.
The Hoffman Car Wash and Jiffy Lube at 55 Delaware Ave. have been closed while Bethlehem officials scrutinize the stability of the land where the businesses are located. “Portions of the slope on the property are actively moving,” the statement said, citing a report issued by the town’s geotechnical engineer.
The car wash and the Jiffy Lube will remain closed until the property can be deemed safe, the town said. Town Supervisor David VanLuven declined to comment or offer an update Monday morning and referred media requests to Town Attorney Jim Potter.
Potter said that the report issued last week by the town’s engineering contractor, CHA Consulting, revealed the slope extending beneath the north side the parking lot where the car wash and garage are located is at a point where “the forces of stability and the forces of instability are at equilibrium.”
“Any outside force – an earthquake, a heavy rainfall, (additional weight) at the top of the slope – could potentially push the slope into instability,” Potter said.
The northwest side of the parking lot, where the crack is visible, is the area most likely to give way. “We’re concerned if the slope were to fail, would it stop at that crack or would it extend into the parking area’s lanes of travel,” Potter said.
CHA and an engineering firm hired by Hoffman Car Wash are both assessing the situation on the hillside. Potter said he was not sure if the two firms had communicated yet.
“Hoffman’s engineering firm has their data, we are trying to facilitate their acquisition of the other data,” Potter said. “They can look at it to determine if they agree with the analysis performed by our geotechnical engineers and if they do, they can evaluate it to determine what the plane of failure would be.”
Potter said town officials had met with some representatives from Hoffman who told them the “area of instability that is observed in the parking lot” does not extend to structure housing the repair shop and the car wash.
Town officials had met with National Grid engineers in recent months who assured them that even if the slope collapsed power could be quickly rerouted which would prevent an extended power outage, Potter said. A large utility pole carrying power lines is in the center of the parking lot.
Television station WRGB-Channel 6 first reported on the developments on Sunday.
The town said National Grid and Eastern Gas were relocating natural gas pipelines from the area. A National Grid spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The town’s statement also said the state Department of Transportation had determined Delaware Avenue itself was safe and did not need to be closed.
Tom Hoffman Jr., the CEO of the car wash chain, said he met with the Bethlehem code enforcement officer Friday and was informed the town had decided to close the car wash and the garage before a nor’easter that was scheduled to move into the region on Monday.
Hoffman said the town based its decision to close the businesses on several years’ worth of data it had reviewed from Hoffman’s engineering contractor, C.T. Male Associates. Hoffman said his engineers told him the document that town officials cited as proof of imminent potential danger did not rise to the level of a formal report.
“It’s not really a study or anything, but they did a quick look again,” Hoffman said.
“C.T. Male has not felt that there’s been enough concern to tell us ‘Hey, we should close down or we should do anything’,” Hoffman said. “And, again, the engineering firm the town has used is only referencing our own data. So our engineering firm’s opinion is we were fine to be opening and the town’s engineering firm feels we shouldn’t be.”
He said data compiled by C.T. Male showed there had been .7 inches of earth movement on the hillside over the last several years.
“It’s not a 23-foot-deep crack,” Hoffman said. “It’s movement at 23 feet.”
Despite the apparent friction between the two assessments, Hoffman said he was not frustrated with the town’s decision.
“I actually completely understand why they’re taking this position,” Hoffman said. “You’re a town and you have health and safety and you have to listen to the experts you hire.”
The area along the Normans Kill has experienced landslides before.
PREVIOUSLY: 25 years ago a landslide crippled Bethlehem
In May of 2000, 400 linear feet of earth, trees and shrubs detached from a rain-saturated hill behind a car wash in Bethlehem and fell to the ravine below.
The slide destroyed Anthony Battaglia’s Delaware Avenue vegetable stand, the California Produce Marketplace. And the Albany Med office building at 99 Delaware Ave. lost half of its parking lot to the landslide.
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The main route to Albany from Bethlehem was severed, and the 18,000 to 19,000 motorists who travel each day between Albany and Bethlehem on Delaware Avenue were forced to take alternate routes – more than doubling their commuting time in some cases.
Tons of dirt and vegetation fell on the Normans Kill Creek, damming a 90-foot-wide and 200-to-300-foot-long section of its waters.
The six-month repair and cleanup cost more than $25 million. And part of the Normans Kill was rerouted.
In 2012, more erosion was noted at the location, and a geologist at the time told the Times Union: “Given the track record that about every 10, 11 years there is a landslide in that area, a significant landslide could take place.”
In 2015, another massive slide brought down a section of slope near the Normanside Country Club in Bethlehem. It blocked a length of the Normans Kill more than two football fields long.
This article originally published at Fear of landslide prompts creekside businesses to close in Bethlehem.