The Lake Montebello sinkhole, now filled and out of sight, has cost taxpayers $30,387,683.93 – or nearly triple the original authorized price, the Board of Estimates was told today.

The expenditure is not only significant due to its size – it burned through 42% the city’s capital budget for stormwater improvements, Public Works Director Matthew Garbark said – but for its lack of transparency.

City rules require DPW to notify the Board of Estimates within 45 days of any spending authorized as “emergency procurements” requiring immediate action without board approval.

But five amendments authorized by DPW between 2023 and July 2025, which added nearly $20 million to the contract, were not disclosed to the board – and the public – until today.

“It got worse and worse and worse,” Garbark said, describing efforts to contain and fix the sinkhole, “and we kept adding [money] to it.”

Comptroller Bill Henry asked, “Is this the first time this has come to the board for notation?”

“I would say, unfortunately, yes,” said Deputy DPW Director Alan Robinson. “This was a procedural issue that we have identified internally.”

“It got worse and worse and worse, and we kept adding [money] to it”  – DPW Director Matthew Garbark.

Robinson blamed the lapse on staff turnover and empty positions at DPW in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

“Once we established some stability in our procurement office, there have been some checks and balance put into play insofar as SOPs and other policy documents to make sure that we do not let this slide again and any future emergency authorizations are noted timely with the board,” he said.

“Just to clarify,” intervened City Administrator Faith Leach, emergency procurements “will have to come back to the board to be, I believe, ‘noted’,” calling on BOE Secretary Celeste Amato to back her up

“Part of the importance of coming back to the board to be ‘noted’ is to produce that contract as part of the board records so we keep that contract in perpetuity,” Amato said.

“Yes, I think there is a two-step process,” Leach continued. “After an emergency procurement occurs, we put it in the system within 30 days, and then it has to be noted by the board within 45 days.”

None of this happened, she acknowledged, after the emergency agreement was made with Garney Construction of Fairfax, Va.

Further confusing matters, a digit was missing in today’s BOE agenda, so that the total cost of the project was listed – twice – as $3,038,763.93 when “it should have read $30,387,683.93,” Robinson said.

The Brew yesterday questioned DPW and the comptroller’s office about the discrepancy.

Henry, whose office prepares the agenda, minimized the matter today.

“It’s literally a typo,” he said. “There is one digit missing in the original board memo. It had nothing to do with a difference of recognition of the amount.”

Hidden Rivers, Crumbling Infrastructure

Baltimore has 1,146-miles of stormwater tunnels that replaced surface streams, nearly all of them built before 1950 to allow for the rapid expansion of housing and industry.

One of the oldest was a brick masonry tunnel bored after the Civil War to carry the waters of Tiffany Run, which covers a wide drain area in northeast Baltimore and empties into Herring Run near Harford Road. The sinkhole exposed a six-story-deep trench that mimicked the contours of the long-buried stream valley.

For years, residents in nearby Lakeside and Ednor Gardens knew something was wrong when water bubbled up from indoor toilets and outdoor stormdrains after heavy storms, often flooding East 35th Street, Hillen Road and other areas.

The sinkhole exposed a six-story-deep trench that mimicked the contours of the long-buried stream valley.

The Tiffany Run tunnel was identified as the most likely source – the nine-foot, masonry structure was either obstructed or no longer able to handle the volume of water dumped by storms.

(More recently, according to Councilwoman Odette Ramos, residential flooding was determined to be caused by “simply not enough room” for rainwater entering the tunnel upstream from Lake Montebello. Plans are underway to construct a stormdrain under Windemere Avenue to divert flooding along East 35th Street, she said.)

Concrete action to repair the lower tunnel didn’t become a top priority until the sinkhole threatened a vital city service.

A seven-foot water main coming from the Montebello Water Filtration Plant, serving 300,000 customers in eastern Baltimore city and county, crossed above the tunnel site.

The water main lay partly suspended in the air after the soils parted and the sinkhole appeared on November 10, 2022 (as first reported by The Brew).

Non-bid Contract

The city declared a public health emergency, and Garney was handed a contract by DPW in February 2023 to re-route the water main around the sinkhole and rebuild the storm drain tunnel.

What was described by then-Public Works Director Jason Mitchell as a relatively straightforward job ballooned into something much bigger after subsurface soils dangerously shifted five months later while Garney was installing a retaining wall.

A second sinkhole opened up, which forced Garney and the city to remove the equivalent of 7,500 truckloads of soil on either side of the tunnel to stabilize the hillside.

When workmen finally gained access to the tunnel, they installed a fiberglass polymer mortar pipe inside the brick masonry walls and replaced the caved-in and sunken sections of the structure.

As the months dragged on, the price tag rose:

Original contract with Garney Construction: $10,988,587.65.
After 1st and 2nd amendments (6/12/23): $16,642,654.65.
After 3rd amendment (12/14/23): $21,991.826.19.
After 4th amendment (8/19/24): $29,812,789.53.
After 5th amendment (7/31/25): $31,059,019.62, revised to $30,387,683.93 by DPW today.

None of these expenditures were disclosed to the spending board or to the media, who were invited to tour the site back in July 2024 and DPW declared repairs soon to be complete.

But that timeline wasn’t to be.

It took until January 2025 for a permanent 84-inch water main to be installed to serve eastside and downtown water customers. The promenade circling Lake Montebello remained closed to the public until spring 2025.

Last summer the sinkhole was filled up with soil and reseeded, leaving a trail of young saplings and stormdrain lids as the only visible evidence of the tunnel project until today when its monetary cost was finally divulged.