RINGWOOD — More than three years have passed, and nearly $1 million allocated to the problem.

Yet the local government is no closer to helping three families financially ruined by sinkholes than on the day their lawns sank into the old mines below.

Two of the families remain in temporary housing after being forced from their homes. In the third household, Roger and Courtney DeGroat of Sheehan Drive must stop their many relatives from even thinking about walking in the yard, now a fenced-off tangle of weeds hiding a huge, ominous void.

"We love it up here," DeGroat says of the remote mountain neighborhood. "But having this all fenced off and wondering if some other section of my yard is going to cave in is no way to live."

The sinkhole issue in Upper Ringwood, a community of mainly Ramapough Mountain Indians, is a complicated one in which the local government quickly took a lead role when it fenced off DeGroat's property in July 2005 and evacuated the other families in November 2006 for safety reasons. The borough then became the conduit for $855,000 in state grants to fix the problem, with another $400,000 still on the way.

Most of the initial money has been spent tackling many aspects of the situation, from fixing up a local road to paying the dislocated families' rents.

Critics say officials should simplify the tortuous process: Use what's left of the money — about $600,000 — to give each dislocated family a $120,000 lump sum to buy a new home and use the rest to repair the DeGroats' yard.

But officials counter that the remaining money isn't enough to cover the true remaining costs: If they handed over the money, the families' lenders would seize it, because there also are mortgages — roughly $160,000 each — that must be paid off. So borough officials are trying to acquire and demolish the two vacant homes before anything else can be done.

Their findings: Ringwood needs double what it has. The current estimate is almost $1.2 million: $400,000 to fill in DeGroat's sinkhole, $320,000 to pay off the two mortgages, $200,000 to raze the buildings and another $120,000 for each family to start over.

Borough Manager Kelley Rohde quickly concedes the situation has gone on for far too long, with no end in sight.

"It's a real problem," she said. "It shouldn't be happening. I just don't know how it can be fixed."

That sinking feeling

DeGroat's sinkhole was the first to appear in the former mining area. Many of the homes, including the two evacuated, were built with federal funds, and the borough's oversight, atop old mine shafts reaching hundreds of feet. Maps from the 1800s and early 1900s mining operation do not exist, so geological testing was required to pinpoint the voids.

The neighborhood also is the site of Ford Motor Co.'s former toxic waste dump, but no link has been found between the sinkholes and Ford's ongoing Superfund excavations of contamination.

"People were evacuated from their homes through no fault of their own and still have no permanent housing, and Mr. DeGroat's sinkhole is still a danger to the Upper Ringwood community — it's an outrage," said former Mayor Wenke Taule. "The Ringwood Council refuses to spend any of the $1 million it was awarded to help the people. Historically this has always been the case — use Upper Ringwood's low-income status to receive grant money, but funnel it elsewhere."

Borough officials bristle at Taule's comments.

"To say the borough is not taking responsibility in helping these residents is wrong and may hurt the residents even further," Councilman John Speer said. "We are doing everything we can to help them, but our hands are tied in so many ways."

State representatives don't agree. They want the $400,000 still coming to go directly to the residents. When that state Department of Community Affairs grant was announced, then-DCA Director Joseph Doria said, "The borough has no say in how that money is spent — $120,000 should go to each family."

Where the money went
 
It's an exercise in untangling red tape to see how funding already nearing $1 million has hardly touched the affected families — and why they've waited so long for relief.

The larger financial picture looks like this: $855,000 in government funding allocated so far, comprising $475,000 from DCA, $180,000 from the state Department of Transportation, and a $200,000 economic revolving grant given years ago that is still in municipal coffers.

The DCA first committed $475,000, initially sending the borough $238,000 to fix DeGroat's sinkhole. But the borough inexplicably held onto it for about 18 months — current officials can't explain what their predecessors were thinking in 2006-07.

By the time Ringwood wanted to use it, the state said the grant could not be used on private land that could be contaminated — DeGroat's homestead was a stone's throw from the Ford site. The state eventually reversed its stand but by then, the borough had used the money on related problems and officials balked at replacing the funds with local taxes.

Meanwhile, the DCA's second dose, $237,000, was applied to rental costs as displaced residents waited for a final remediation of their yards.

But the borough's diversion of the initial $238,000 intended to fix DeGroat's sinkhole came back to haunt it: The money had been used for geological testing, fencing, and engineering costs — purposes not allowed under the grant's specifications.

So DCA told Ringwood to submit invoices for its repairs on nearby Sheehan Drive, which had partially collapsed due to sinkholes. But that work had been done with the $180,000 DOT grant.

"I know that sounds ridiculous, but DCA said to submit the invoices for Sheehan Drive, even though we used them for the DOT grant," Rohde said. "I know it doesn't sound right, but that's what they told us to do. So we did."

But that, too, led to an additional, time-consuming official muddle: Robin O'Hearn, president of the environmental group Skylands CLEAN, and another community advocate contacted DCA about the duplicate paperwork.

"The borough has spent money on fixing roads and other items in Upper Ringwood but the residents' health and safety issues aren't being addressed," said O'Hearn. "They need to do what's right."

DCA staff eventually said they have no problem with Ringwood's paperwork. But then a federal review also had to be undertaken because the DCA grant included funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Finally, in a February 2009 letter to HUD staff, DCA Director Paul G. Stridick said the allegation that the grant "was spent incorrectly is not correct."

Meanwhile, for the families, three years had passed, and money problems of their own persisted in the form of those outstanding mortgages.

Trouble with takeovers

Those mortgages posted a major hurdle, too, to the borough's strategy of first tackling the whole sinkhole issue by taking over the properties.

When voids opened around the two Van Dunk Lane houses, officials moved the families into trailers and then a rental duplex in Riverdale, paid for with state funds.

But Rodney Mann and his brother, Tommy Mann, who did not return calls for comment, continue to pay the mortgages on their Van Dunk houses and have said their insurance companies denied coverage. So local officials are now negotiating with the mortgage firms.

"We're trying to reach a settlement on the mortgages — they really have no value anymore and we shouldn't have to pay the full mortgage to get title to them," Speer said. "That is key: If we can get them down, we have much more to work with."

The houses are currently assessed at $100 each and the land is valued at about $5,000, according to the tax assessor's office.

"We need to take possession and then demolish them," Speer said. "We can't leave them there as a possible liability for the town."

Speer also explained a $200,000 demolition estimate, which shows some items that on first blush seem inflated, such as removing a boat and car for $4,000.

"A contractor will be going on those properties knowing there's a risk to his equipment or possibly even a danger to his workers," Speer said. "We had to cover those costs that we expect will be high when we were estimating the job."

Officials also want to subdivide DeGroat's property and have the borough take ownership of the sinkhole section. It would then be able to do a less thorough job in filling in the sinkhole, at a cost of $145,000 instead of the $400,000 estimate given four years ago.

But DeGroat doesn't want to lose his yard.

"They got the money from the state — I want them to fix my yard like Sheehan Drive," he said. "I don't want to live with a fence and I don't want to move. My roots are here."

As negotiations continue with the mortgage companies, two families are left waiting to see if they'll ever be able to own a house again. And DeGroat continues to tell his relatives the back yard is off limits.

E-mail: williamsb@northjersey.com

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