The geotechnical report the town commissioned runs 116 pages and cost nearly $200,000. It does not say why Summit Avenue collapsed — or whether eight families can go home.

Eight houses near Phillipsburg’s Summit Avenue have been empty since February. Five months later, the power was still off — and the tax bills were still coming.

The families who own the houses have waited since February for a single document: the geotechnical study that the Town of Phillipsburg commissioned to explain why the street collapsed. They needed it to answer one more question: whether anyone can safely go back inside. That report arrived on July 13, at a cost approaching $200,000. It does not provide a cause. Nor does it answer if the families can return.

A speaker, unnamed in the June 23 council meeting minutes but identified by TapInto as resident Bill Ohlandt, put the situation plainly: "If there are no voids the power must be turned on and residents granted access in order to make repairs." Ohlandt, who owns one of the affected houses, added: "These residents are paying taxes but cannot live in their homes."

By Ohlandt's account, testing had wrapped five weeks before that June evening and drilling two weeks prior. The report would surface July 13, nearly five weeks after the drilling ended.

The money bought no concrete answers

GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., based out of Massachusetts but with an office in Somerset, was the engineering firm the town hired. GZA wrote its assignment into the report's first paragraph: oversight of "selected sinkhole repairs" and an effort to "assess the probable cause and extent of existing subsurface voids." The body of the document runs 13 pages before the appendices begin. It contains no finding of cause and not one concrete recommendation.

GZA's nearest approach is a hypothetical, offered in passing: soil above the rock can slip into open voids when the ground is saturated, the engineers wrote, "such as would occur if a water main were to break." 

A main had indeed broken. Crews peeling back the pavement on February 19 found the pipe split and pouring into the cavity below. Whether the break opened the ground or the ground opened the pipe, the study never ventures to answer.

Phillipsburg Mayor Randy Piazza Jr. called the study a start. The Easton Express-Times, Pennsylvania-based but Phillipsburg's paper, put it differently in its own headline: the report "offers data, not answers."

The council's first GZA contract, approved on March 24, was for $8,000, council records show — a testing job that spread from the roadway into private yards. By July, the study's approved cost had swollen to roughly $170,000, with overruns pushing the total toward $200,000, the mayor told the Express-Times.

For weeks, the town could not even read the work it was paying for. Piazza told the council June 23 that the administration had received no information from the testing company, which would not release anything until its reports were finalized, council minutes state.

Instruments found seven anomalies

The study's Appendix III reads nothing like reassurance. Seven patches of anomalous gravity pockmark the survey grid, the geophysics firm GFT found. Four dot the roadway near Dugan Alley and Pear Alley. Three reach beneath homes, at 15, 21 and 35 Summit Avenue, and in each case the instruments could not measure how far they extend. 

The largest, some 30 feet square, sits under the residence at 21 Summit. At 35 Summit, one void roughly 10 feet wide and 12 feet long lies beside a shallow dip in the yard and may run larger, the house itself blocking the measurement: "The full extent of the anomaly could not be determined, as it extends beyond the gravity grid beneath a residential structure."

Below the pavement, conditions worsen. Weathered dolomite bedrock lies anywhere from 6.5 to 60 feet down, lurching across short distances, according to the 17 borings and 37 probes GZA logged. Very soft clay sits on the rock in several of the boreholes, material that can shift when water reaches it. Crews sealing the holes pumped in grout and watched the ground drink more than the holes could hold, evidence of fractures and voids below.

One boring site tells a quiet story of its own. Labeled B-5, it punched through roughly 11 feet of dense graded aggregate, the fill used in road reconstruction. Crews had repaired or stabilized that stretch of Summit Avenue before, substantially.

The report's legal language concedes the ground has not finished moving. Future sinkhole activity "may occur despite the investigations, repairs, or remedial measures described in this report," GZA wrote.

The street failed in February, State aid promised in March

The February collapse came in four acts. A garbage truck and a car dropped into the first two holes, which opened around February 16 along the paths of the water and gas mains. Then the big one, a day later: a loaded dump truck working the first collapse dropped into a larger void. A fourth, smaller crater appeared in front of 35 Summit Avenue. Within hours, the town declared a state of local emergency.

Contractors filled the wounds with roughly 35 cubic yards of flowable fill, topped with a cap about five feet thick, the report states. Radar scans the day before had flagged potential voids in front of 21, 27, 29, 31, 33 and 35 Summit Avenue, plus one more in Mitchell Alley behind the homes. The properties themselves fell outside the emergency work — the report's stabilization covers the roadway only.

Aging infrastructure is the easy suspect. Here it has half an alibi: the report passes along, attributed to no one, the claim that a major waterline replacement ran down this stretch of Summit in 2016, with new connections added as part of the work.

Nor was February a singular event for the water system's owner, Aqua New Jersey. A main break and sinkhole hit Pickford and Marshall streets on Jan. 31. Another break struck Pickford Avenue two days after the pavement along Summit gave way. On June 2, a main failure at Kent and Logan Streets cut water to everything south of them, WFMZ-TV reported.

Governor Mikie Sherrill visited Phillipsburg on March 6 with the state's checkbook: $1.2 million in New Jersey Department of Transportation Local Aid for permanent repairs that would follow still more investigation. The grant, she said, would "make sure they are able to get back to work and get back in their homes." Officials gave no timeline for the grant disbursement. That was 19 weeks ago.

The bills arrive on schedule

Phillipsburg's own ledger shows what five months of emergency costs. On March 10, the council approved a $1.5 million emergency appropriation for sinkhole repairs, more than double the statutory 3 percent limit. The town had to petition the state Division of Local Government Services for permission to spend it. NJBallot found no public record showing whether the state granted the request.

The spending continued into summer. On June 23, the same night the displaced families pressed for answers, the council introduced a $2,425,000 capital package, $2,303,750 of it financed by new borrowing. In the same sitting, the council moved to reappropriate $343,101.34 in leftover bond money, according to the minutes.

Trenton's delegation made promises of its own. State Senator Doug Steinhardt said in April that he and Assemblymen John DiMaio and Erik Peterson (all R, 23rd District) would explore economic relief for residents and businesses hurt by the South Main Street bridge closure, TapInto reported. No legislation, grant or program has surfaced since.

The sinkhole is not even the town's only infrastructure failure. The 116-year-old Orphan Bridge on South Main Street, currently rated to carry zero load, has sat closed to traffic since April 8, draining customers from the business district on the far side of the tracks. Promised reopening windows — early July, then mid-July — have come and gone. As of July 20, the town had announced no new date.

In the gap between promises and delivery stands NORWESCAP, the community action agency for northwest New Jersey, based in Phillipsburg. The mayor says the group "has been taking the lead on helping the families." The American Red Cross assisted in the first days, town statements show; NORWESCAP has carried the effort since.

"Home owners insurance does not cover sink holes," said Dan Roerig, one of the affected property owners. "Make my house livable again with a foundation, that's all I want out of it. Get these people back in there and everybody happy again."

The GZA report ends with an invitation: "Please contact us if you have any questions regarding this information." Displaced homeowner Amber Toth's question is five months old: "Like how long is this going to take, I have nothing," she told News 12. "I was given 15 minutes to get out." The houses are still dark.

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Sources

• "Geotechnical Engineering Consultation Report — Summit Avenue Sinkholes," File No. 26.0093495.00, GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc. (July 10, 2026)

• "Press release on the South Main Street bridge closure," New Jersey Department of Transportation (April 8, 2026)

• "Press release announcing $1.2 million New Jersey Department of Transportation grant for Summit Avenue repairs," Office of the Governor of New Jersey (March 6, 2026)

• "Bridge closure update," Town of Phillipsburg (April 10, 2026)

• "Council Meeting Minutes," Town of Phillipsburg (June 23, 2026)

• "Ordinance No. O2026-21," Town of Phillipsburg (introduced June 23, 2026)

• "Press release declaring a State of Local Emergency," Town of Phillipsburg (February 17, 2026)

• "Resolution No. R2026-41," Town of Phillipsburg (adopted March 10, 2026)

• "Resolution No. R2026-48," Town of Phillipsburg (adopted March 24, 2026)

• Glenn Epps, "Cause of massive P'burg sinkholes a mystery, but mayor says town will get to bottom of it," The Express-Times (February 23, 2026)

• Cierra Genelle, "Phillipsburg seeks DOT grant to fund 'huge' costs of ongoing sinkhole repairs," WFMZ-TV (February 20, 2026)

• Rudy Miller, "P'burg sinkhole report offers data, not answers, but it's a start, mayor says," The Express-Times (July 16, 2026)

• Morning Call staff, "Phillipsburg declares 'state of local emergency' after sinkhole swallows dump truck," The Morning Call (February 17, 2026)

• "Coverage of the governor's Phillipsburg visit," News 12 New Jersey (March 6, 2026)

• "Phillipsburg Council Approves Summit Avenue Sinkhole Testing, Could Local Geology Be the Cause," TapInto Phillipsburg (March 26, 2026)

• "Coverage of the South Main Street bridge closure," TapInto Phillipsburg (April 29, 2026)

• "Phillipsburg Releases Summit Avenue Sinkhole Investigation Reports, Cause Still Not Determined," TapInto Phillipsburg (July 13, 2026)

• "Officials aim to get South Main Street Bridge in Phillipsburg open to 2-way traffic by mid-July, mayor says," WFMZ-TV (April 29, 2026)

• "Water service down across Phillipsburg following main break," WFMZ-TV (June 2, 2026)

• "Phillipsburg business owners struggle amid South Main Street bridge closure," WFMZ-TV (June 26, 2026)

• "Coverage of the South Main Street bridge closure," WRNJ (May 29, 2026)

• "Residents report water main break over weekend in Phillipsburg; repairs near completion," The Express-Times (February 2, 2026)

• "Sinkholes displace Phillipsburg residents," The Lafayette (February 27, 2026)