BATON ROUGE - Nine potentially ankle-breaking holes are scattered across Cody Gateley's front lawn on Cal Road in Baton Rouge.

Gateley says the problem holes showed up in early spring 2023. 

"Whenever I was starting to cut my grass after the winter, I started seeing some places along the edges of the grass where it met the sidewalk start to fail," he said.

To demonstrate the severity, and with a tape measurer in hand, Gateley put the ruler into one of the deepest holes on the property. It turns out the measurer reached more than 70 inches below the surface. 

The sinking situation at his home seemed to start underground. For help, Gateley went to the top and put in a work order with the city-parish to have someone survey the land. 

"I filed a work order with the city-parish," Gateley said. "I followed up with a phone call that day trying to explain to them what was going on. They said an inspector would be with me within a week."

Gateley sent a work order to the 311 service on June 4th and has called the Baton Rouge Department of Public Works several times with help from their council member Laurie Adams. More than two months later, the family still hasn't received any updates on a solution, and Adams also did not receive a response from the department.

Without any help from DPW, Gateley decided to research the problem himself. The holes on the yard line up directly with the underground storm drains. Gateley says the problem likely came from a long-term drainage issue in the neighborhood.

"We have experienced flooding in the front of the neighborhood, and I believe it was May of 2021," Gateley said. "So we have a history of storm-water issues here. So if this damage occurred during that time-period we'll never know, but I can't even get anybody out here to do an inspection to at least hear what I have to say about it."

WBRZ has reached out to DPW for an update on the work-order progress, but we have not received a response.