Work is underway to fix a large sinkhole on Lakeshore Road at Kettle and Stony Point.

Jason Cole, general manager of infrastructure for Lambton County says late Friday, the county received a call about a sinkhole just east of Indian Hills Golf Course. Local police blocked the road until county road crews arrived and set up a westbound detour through Forest and an eastbound detour at Townsend Line.

Cole says a 48 inch, 40-foot long steel culvert appears to have had an opening under the roadway. There were two significant rainfalls in the area earlier in the week and Cole says there was a high volume of water travelling around the culvert which eventually caused the washout.

Cole couldn’t say exactly how big the hole is. “It is certainly impacting one lane of the roadway but it is difficult to say how far it goes back,” he says.

By Monday morning, Cole had secured a contractor to fix the sinkhole and was working on securing the materials needed for the job. How quickly crews can repair and reopen the road “hinges around two items – securing the material particularly the replacement culvert…and the weather; we can’t replace the culvert if there is a lot of flow through the area. Another rain event of that size could hinder us.”

Cole is hopeful without more heavy rain, the roadway could reopen in a week.

Meantime, the golf course is still accessible by coming west on Lakeshore to the entrance.