Sinkhole in Manitoba community expands, will be costly fix

A sinkhole that formed in Rosenort, Man. in May has grown in size significantly. CTV’s Joseph Bernacki returns to Rosenort to find out when repairs will happen.

Rosenort resident Pat Friesen has watched a sinkhole near her property slowly cave in to a costly chasm over the summer.

“It definitely has gotten deeper, probably a little bit wider,” Friesen said.

Since May, a section of Pleasant Valley Road in the small farming community has attracted a lot of attention.

“There were lots of visitors, people coming all the time,” Friesen said.

“It’s kind of slowed down now but people still come to see if anything has been done on it.”

It is going to be a costly fix.

The R.M. of Morris hired engineers who have since completed preliminary drawings. They needed this so that the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans could approve any work due to fish in the nearby Morris River.

Deputy Reeve Mervin Dueck said the R.M. of Morris knew the fix would not come cheap.

“The preliminary estimates right now stand at about $1.2 million for this project that could come up or down depending on what the tenders come in,” Dueck said.

“Then we as an R.M. need to decide how we are going to fund this.”

Dueck said footing the bill will be tough. The R.M. of Morris is still recovering from devastating flooding in 2022, where damage estimates went up to $30 million.

“Just to give a little bit of perspective, just the culverts for this project are $200,000,” Dueck said.

“We’re scrambling from a finance perspective to try to keep it above water.”

The R.M. of Morris was able to apply for a Manitoba GRO grant. It is an application-based program to help provincial municipalities fund critical infrastructure needs.

Dueck said they are still waiting to hear back if grant funding to help cover a significant portion of the cost to fix the sinkhole will be approved.

“That is going to be the only saving grace to it, if we can get that,” Dueck said.

“If not, we’ll probably have to delay it for the year so we can budget for it.”

CTV News Winnipeg reached out to the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the province for comment. We did not hear back by deadline.