LIBERTY HILL, Texas (KXAN) — A neighborhood road in the Santa Rita Ranch development is sinking and cracking around a manhole cover, and there is no known reason why it’s happening. It has neighbors in the area very concerned.

“As you can see behind me, I don’t know if we have much more time to resolve this before it sinks in,” Julie Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez lives right in front of where this hole formed on Suri Drive. She and her neighbors said the road first started showing signs of sinking on Halloween night last year. This past April, the road began to crack and noticeably started sinking.

The road around the manhole cover began to crack and sink in April of 2023 (Courtesy: Julie Rodriguez)

A waiting game

Neighbors said they reached out to their homeowners association who told them it was an issue that Williamson County needed to fix. After four months of calling, Rodriguez said they were not receiving any help and decided to reach out to KXAN.

The hole was completely surrounded by orange construction cones last week. When KXAN reached out to the county about the issue, a team from the Road and Bridges department went to the hole and covered it with metal plates that same day.

A car passes by the hole in the street, which is surrounded with orange cones.

A spokesperson with the county said in an email, “The issue with why it is taking so long is that with the high level of construction around the county, it is difficult to get subcontractors to work on smaller projects such as this one. In addition, Williamson County needs to make sure that there are no utilities in the way of the work, and it has taken a while for utilities to respond to our requests. So, as an interim fix, Williamson County put a metal plate over the area. Then, we will continue to determine the underlying issue and location of utilities so that we can repair the roadway.”

“We’ve been living with this going on the tail end of four months. I can’t imagine that you don’t have the resources in four months to get this fixed,” Rodriguez said. She is worried about the safety of her children and other kids in the neighborhood, especially with Halloween coming up next month.

Rodriguez and her neighbors worry that the hole will continue to grow. They say there are more cracks forming around the large hole.

This is not the first problem with this street

This is not the first time this neighborhood has seen this kind of problem with their road. Neighbors said this same problem happened just a few hundred feet away from where this current hole is now growing in 2021.

That problem was eventually fixed.

Rodriguez said the local municipal utility district snaked a camera down into the hole to check the utility lines in the area and found no issues. Williamson County is continuing to find the cause of this hole.