Bob Bigsby’s protest of a sewer project in Baldwin City didn’t last long Thursday, but he got his point across.

Bigsby – broken back and all – climbed into a hole in front of his Sixth Street home at 7 a.m. and didn’t come out for an hour, when City Administrator Jeff Dingman arrived to talk to him.

It kept work crews from installing a concrete manhole for a while, but it didn’t stop the project.

“I could have held it up longer if I’d have stayed in the hole longer,” Bigsby said.

The city had conducted a meeting with homeowners along the stretch of Sixth Street regarding the $245,000 sewer project being done ahead of a $1.1 million street replacement project. Homeowners were told what would be done and where.

But Bigsby says he was misled about whether his trees would be saved and where a manhole would be installed. He said he lost a 100-year-old tree and a 30-year-old tree to the project.

“My cooling bill has gone up 30 percent,” Bigsby said. “The air conditioner can’t keep up on hot days.”

Dingman said Bill Winegar, the city’s public works director, had told Bigsby the city would re-evaluate the route of the line in hopes of saving the trees. Because of the depth of the line, that strategy didn’t work.

It was seeing the manhole in his driveway Wednesday night that sent Bigsby over the edge. And so he devised his protest.

“Broken promises again,” he said. “Winegar told me three different times that manhole would be north of me. I’m not too happy with the city right now.”

Again, the city disagrees.

“It has been in the plans to be right there since the inception of the project,” Dingman said.

The manhole will be flush with the surface of the driveway and won’t be an obstruction, he said. And Bigsby’s getting a new concrete driveway – free of charge.