ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. – Another house in danger of collapse in St. Charles County is being demolished.
Tara Rath watches on as her neighbor’s home gets torn down.
“Are we possibly going to lose our house as well, and will we really know what’s going on?,” she asked.
It is the second house in the Heritage Subdivision to be torn down. Both were in danger of falling down a hill behind them due to slope failure.
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Rath’s foundation is also showing signs of damage. It started with cracks in her retaining wall.
“We had the company come back out that did it, and they said they weren’t really sure what’s going on here. Then we started seeing these large cracks in the ground,” she said.
Elliott Davis, before retiring from FOX 2, highlighted the problem in multiple reports.
Then, St. Charles County came up with a plan to both help homeowners and fix the underlying problem.
“These people have been impacted by these bad geologic conditions, and I’m just glad the county has stepped up and made these folks whole,” St. Charles County Councilman Tim Baker said.
First, they had to find out what the problem was. The county got $2.5 million from the state, and the county matched that with $2.5 million of its own ARPA funds. Some of that money was used to hire a consultant and study the problem. The consultant told the county the slope was failing due to weakened soil, not a faulty stormwater system causing erosion as was originally suspected.
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Work to fix it was originally put out to bid in November, but the county did not receive a single bid. It went up for bid again this month and six companies submitted quotes to the county for anywhere from
Six companies responded, quoting the county anywhere from $855,519.80 to $5,396,000.
The county has also set aside some money to help affected homeowners.
“There was $144,000 that we allocated for this, and we let the HOA figure out how they wanted to divy it up, and so all of that money has been allocated,” Baker said.
Rath is approved for some of that funding, but she cannot breathe a sigh of relief yet.
“A couple other companies said you really need to wait until they fix this overall issue. Pretty much just don’t throw money at a problem when we really might not understand the scope of what’s happening here,” Rath said.
The county council will discuss the bids at its next council meeting. The county says work could begin on the project this spring, if not sooner.
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