They look like potholes. They eat cars like potholes.
But, in an amazing display of bureaucracy at its most annoying, officials say they can’t fix them — because they’re wholly different holes.
Nearly a month after a former city official e-mailed 311 to report a pair of “potholes” on a busy Brooklyn street, the gaping craters are still there — after the Department of Transportation determined they’re another type of “street defect.”
City inspectors came up with this important distinction during a painstaking, taxpayer-funded inspection of the two holes, which are about 40 feet apart on Flatlands Avenue near East 38th Street in Marine Park, according to the agency’s bizarre e-mail response.
“This is what gives government bureaucracy a bad name,” said former Taxi & Limousine Commissioner Fidel Del Valle. who reported the holes.
“It’s something that’s obvious, has an obvious solution, and they’re being officious.”
He’d e-mailed 311 shortly after spotting the holes — which he described as “monster-movie-type-big” — while driving near his house last month.
In the absurdly pedantic response, the DOT instructs him to go to its Web site for a primer on different types of “street defects.”
It likely won’t matter to the driver of the car that gets its suspension ripped out, but 311 callers should know that a “cave-in” has a “jagged hole and a deep void” while potholes have a “definable bottom.”
Amazingly, the e-mail from Aug. 22 then suggests Del Valle re-report the problem once he’s figured out exactly the kind of holes they are.
“Thank you for your concern in this matter,” the e-mail concludes.
Del Valle recalled he almost choked on the milk he was drinking the first time he read the inane response to his complaint.
“I had to read the e-mail twice,” said Del Valle, who headed the TLC from 1991 to 1995. “I was stunned and amazed.”
A DOT spokesman said the craters are actually “sinkholes” and that they had been referred to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.
But whatever you call them, the holes still haven’t been repaired
“The hole continues to damage suspensions, is a traffic and pedestrian hazard,’’ Del Valle said.
“There are no polite adjectives for this.’’
Local residents are infuriated .
“It’s insane,” said Jim Costas, 46, a contractor who lives in the neighborhood.
“I feel bad for the people who bottom out their car and have to spend thousands of dollars to fix it.”
The distinction between pothole, cave-in or street cut — another DOT term for a square indent — was lost on the neighborhood.
“They look like potholes to me,” said one woman who lives right across the street from the holes.
Marco Pierre, who lives nearby, said, “It’s dangerous. Cars speed down the block and they swerve to avoid the holes.”