(WSB photo, this morning)
11:54 AM: Earlier this week, we wrote about the longrunning leak that’s left the street chronically wet at California/Edmunds, and Seattle Public Utilities‘ response suggesting our inquiry was the first they’d heard of it. Multiple readers, however, said they’d reported it to the city weeks and months ago. While we awaited a response to our followup inquiry, another commenter pointed out that no-parking signs were placed nearby for work tonight – and today, SPU’s Sabrina Register confirms that:
Thank you for bringing this leak to our attention, and to the customers who reported it to our Operations Response Center (ORC: 206-386-1800), the best route to report flooding and ponding issues and sewer backups. Our crews respond to roughly 800-1,000 potential water leaks alone in any given year, so we appreciate customers helping us find leaks across the City.
The ORC did receive reports of this leak, and we apologize to those customers who felt like their reports were ignored. With the exception of significant, emergency repairs, we perform the work in a more planned and coordinated manner, which can take some time to get the required permits and approvals.
The leak is scheduled to be repaired this evening (September 14), pending coordination with affected businesses in the vicinity. On these types of planned repairs, we work with local businesses in advance because their water service is often shut off for a temporary, multi-hour period, and we can sometimes get the work done in the off-hours or middle of the night to limit those impacts.
So if you see SPU crews at work there tonight, that’s what’s going on. (So far, the SPU water map – which has a list of emergency and scheduled outages – does not include this work.)
ADDED THURSDAY EVENING: While we were in The Junction for the West Seattle Art Walk, we noted the work had begun:
The northbound lanes were blocked but two-way traffic was continuing via a temporary repurposing of a southbound lane.
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