Growing chasm leads to lawsuit
Lake Conroe woman: Homeowners group has failed to stop ‘sinkhole’ from widening
A Lake Conroe woman is growing alarmed as a chasm, or what she and legal documents describe as a “sinkhole,” beside her waterfront home expands with every rainstorm.
For nearly 15 years, Sue Horne has lived in the gated Grand Harbor community, a pricey neighborhood billed as providing fabulous wooded and waterfront estate lots. Now her home on the lake’s west side is threatened because of what’s being termed “one continuous sinkhole.”
The widening hole, on common property that descends to the lake beside her house, has damaged her pool and its deck and caused her backyard kitchen to sink nearly a foot, she said. In a lawsuit filed last month, she alleges the homeowners association that maintains the community, Grand Harbor POA, has failed to stop the hole from expanding. She also accuses the association of damaging her home by ignoring the advice of an engineer and trying to fix the problem with cheap labor.
The issue dates to October 2015 when the supply and return lines to Horne’s pool inexplicably broke and her pool deck and outdoor kitchen — expensive improvements she made after buying the house in 2002 — began sinking. Horne is the original owner of the East Cool Breeze Lane home that measures nearly
4,500 square feet, occupies a large lot and is valued at more than $600,000 by the Montgomery Central Appraisal District.
Horne is seeking $200,000 to $500,000 from the association, as well as from a Harris County man who owns the vacant lot next to her home.
“There’s been nothing done to mitigate,” Horne said. “As far as stopping the damage, they’ve done nothing.”
Tekell, Book, Allen & Morris — the law firm representing the homeowners association — filed a response accusing Horne of negligently improving property on the nearby easement. But its denial of responsibility did not specify what sort of work supposedly has been done.
The association and the lawyer handling its case have not returned calls seeking comment.
Horne’s lawyer, J. Randal Bays, says the association’s claim “shows a basic misunderstanding of Texas law.”
“You can’t trespass on your own property. An easement gives another certain rights to use your land,” Bays wrote in an email. “Ms. Horne owns the land at issue and on a portion of her land the developer had an easement permitting the installation of a drainage pipe. It’s still her land. And being a good neighbor and rule follower, Ms. Horne obtained the POA’s approval before she landscaped the easement.”
Electrical damage
According to Horne, she was even forced to pay for expensive repairs when a “ditch digger” hired by the association to work on the hole accidentally grabbed electrical lines from the side of her house with a backhoe. That pulled the lines through the home’s meter box while “everything in my breaker box was arcing.”
She and neighbors say cables that run down the hillside and support wooden retaining walls along the lake also were damaged.
Horne alleges that after she reported her problems, the association’s infrastructure committee recommended to its board that $120,000 be spent on a plan that included repairing a collapsed 24-inch drainage pipe under the slope. Her suit claims water was not flowing into the lake as intended, but was apparently saturating the slope and land above, creating the sinkhole, eroding the land, spilling silt into the lake and ultimately damaging her property.
But, according to Horne, the board decided instead to hire laborers whose previous experience included clearing drainage ditches. She alleges board members even bragged about having the work done at a “cost of some $40,000 rather than the $120,000 repair cost estimate provided by the engineer.”
Worries shared
She says the laborers not only caused the electrical damage to her home but also failed to slow the growth of the hole.
“You can see, my property is going into Lake Conroe,” she said. “It’s moving and nothing’s being done to stop it.”
While Horne’s home is closest to the growing hole, some neighbors share her worries.
Russell Hoch, who lives two houses away, fears possible damage to the retaining walls as well as potential danger from the widening hole, especially when his grandchildren visit.
“They want to run down the hill, go to the dock, go fishing,” Hoch said of his grandchildren. “They look over and see that, and they want to go investigate. It’s hard to keep them away.”
Another neighbor, Edward Griffith, says the hole gets bigger with every rainstorm, heightening worries during the heaviest rainfall season. He also notes that more silt is washing into the boat canal behind the houses.
Hoch and Griffith are not plaintiffs. But both fault the association for offering assurances that it was taking action while the problem remains unresolved and the hole keeps growing.