In recent days, Dennis Kintop, the Batavia Riverwalk project’s volunteer general contractor, has had a few surprises, not all of them pleasant.
The fact that concrete can harden underwater surprised and reassured Kintop on Wednesday as he stood in 2 feet of water trying to remedy his other surprise–that about 80 feet of the wall supporting the almost-completed Riverwalk had dropped an inch and a half since December.
Last December, Kintop found that the gravel base under 10 linear feet of the path’s 900-linear-foot brick wall had washed out, and the wall was dropping forward. The problem area has since stretched to 80 linear feet.
“You know how water comes up on a beach and takes a little bit of sand, then comes up and takes a little more. For some reason that is happening under the water at the base,” said Kintop.