LIRR using viaduct area to store materials

The hole in the pavement of Granada Circle in Mount Sinai wasn't a mere pothole -- it was a pit left in the wake of a cable-splicing job.

But long after the cables were spliced, the hole remained -- a few square feet and large enough that drivers made sure to avoid it.

Granada resident Terry Swiatocha turned to Watchdog last month after several attempts to get the pit, left after excavation by a Verizon crew, filled in. She last spoke to Verizon in the fall, she said, when she urged that the work be done before winter because snow and ice could mask the potential hazard. Swiatocha said the staffer she spoke with was reassuring, and she ended the conversation expecting the hole to be filled in soon.

It wasn't.

"Now it's the end of January," she said when she called Watchdog, and the pit remains.

As it turns out, the hole was one of two on Granada Circle. And that was one too many to prevent confusion.

The initial cable splicing "required two pits to be dug on the same street, but quite a distance apart," Verizon spokesman John Bonomo said.

Both were initially backfilled, Bonomo said, and when the company's contractor was told "to make the backfilling permanent, it was not clearly spelled out on the request that both excavations" were to be filled in. One was "completely restored," he said, "but the other wasn't."

In response to Watchdog's query, Bonomo said, "We have sent additional paperwork over to the contractor," adding that the job was due to be completed the next day.

Last week Swiatocha confirmed that the work had been done -- and enclosed photos to prove it.