Lexington, SC (WLTX) - Officials closed South Church St. and Gibson Rd in Lexington Tuesday evening, because the earthen dam holding in Gibsons Pond had partially given way.
"It was a humongous hole! And when we walked up there you could see that it was probably about this wide," says Suzanne Bryant, spreading her arms wide. She lives just down the hill from the dam.
"It was a lot of clay and stuff going into our yard and I thought it was gonna break at any time," says her sone Quinton.
The City of Lexington sent in crews to pump water out of the pond to relieve the stress on the dam, and allow for repairs to be made.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the pond had already been drained about 3 or 4 feet. The biggest problem was that, if the dam breaks, the people on the other side of the tree line are down a hill, so all that water is going to flow down into their yard.
Suzanne says, "You can't tell from down here, but that hill is big and it goes almost straight down, and the water would go into my creek."
She was told to take anything of value out of the secondary structure on her property in case the dam gave out. So far that hasn't happened because the pond is being drained, but the water is still being pumped downhill.
She says, "One of the town council messaged me last night, because I know him personally, and he said, 'Well I think they're draining it completely.' And I said yeah, but unfortunately all of that water, every drop of it you see is going into my yard and my creek, and I can't do anything about it."
She says repairs were made on the dam recently because of a similar incident.
"This was probably a couple months ago they worked on it. And then they started filling it back up and they thought it was all fixed," she recalls.
The board members of the Church Street Commons HOA were not available for comment, but Suzanne hopes to speak with the HOA president later today, and is hoping they can prevent this from happening again.