SinkholeOdds

Sinkhole risk in Kittitas County, WA: No soluble rock mapped

No soluble rock mapped

No soluble bedrock mapped.

On soluble rock
under 1%
At or near the surface
under 1%
Buried under cover
0%

The next step for one property

No soluble bedrock is mapped here, so natural sinkholes are unlikely. Collapses from broken pipes or old mines are a separate risk.

That works out to roughly 5 of Kittitas County's 2,297 square miles on soluble rock, 5 of them with the rock at or near the surface. With about 48,172 residents (21 per square mile), much of the land is open, and the mapped rock may sit far from where people actually live. The figures come from 558 map points about 2.0 miles apart, so a pocket smaller than that can be missed or overstated.

Two things to read before deciding: how these percentages are measured, and the warning signs that apply anywhere.

Counties around Kittitas County

The nearest county rated sinkhole country is Emery County, UT, about 752 miles southeast. 4 of the 6 closest counties land in the same band, so this is a regional pattern rather than a local quirk.

The rock underneath

The largest mapped soluble unit here is the Paleocene-Cretaceous nonmarine rocks (arkose), Eocene in age, covering about under 1% of the county.

Against the rest of Washington

Kittitas County ranks 8 of 39 in Washington for soluble rock at the surface, and sits above 50% of US counties on that measure.