(Recent Lowman Beach aerial photo, by Long Bach Nguyen)
Next week, a month-long project is starting at King County’s Murray Pump Station in Lowman Beach Park, and it means reduced park access and parking, according to county spokesperson Annie Kolb-Nelson, who explains:

King County contractors will begin work during the week of July 16 to replace the wet well grate in the County’s Murray Pump Station located in Lowman Beach Park. The work is not part of the CSO project but necessary for the maintenance of the facility. The project will take about a month to complete and will reduce parking on Beach Drive Southwest and access to the southeastern corner of Lowman Beach Park (see attachment). Public access to the swing set, tennis court and beach will be maintained.

The pump station transports West Seattle’s sewage and stormwater for treatment at the County treatment plant in Magnolia. The new grate will allow County operations and maintenance staff to continue working safely in the pump station. The old grate has been corroded by sewer gases over the course of the pump station’s 55 years of service. Park users and neighbors can expect the following:

· Work hours typically 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday
· More noise and activity at the site
· Construction fencing and boom truck on site
· Reduced access to southeastern corner of the park
· Three closed parking spaces on Beach Drive Southwest

Again, she says this is NOT related to the upcoming megaproject to build a million-gallon underground storage tank (the houses/apartments in the center of the photo, “above” the park – east of it – will be demolished for that), but there is a related meeting coming up:

Also, the next Murray CSO Control Facility DAG meeting is Tuesday July 17, beginning at 6:30 at the Fauntleroy Church.

Meeting topics include:
· SDOT review of 60% design
· Facility landscaping, architecture and art
· Site fencing and art

This weekend, King County Wastewater Treatment Division will send staffers to Sunrise Heights and Westwood for 29 separate block meetings over the course of two days to discuss details of the plan for “green stormwater infrastructure” to reduce combined-sewer overflows (CSO) downhill – officially known as the Barton CSO Control Project. The schedule and locations are shown here, on a flyer distributed to residents recently to get the word out about the meetings, and listed in this news release. The county says the bioswale project will divert enough rainwater out of the combined-sewer system to reduce the number of overflows into Puget Sound from the Barton Pump Station in Fauntleroy – a reduction required by the state and federal governments.

Meantime, one group of skeptical Sunrise Heights neighbors has launched a website to spotlight their questions and concerns about how the bioswales will affect their neighborhood. We reported their story in March (our report details their concerns about the bioswales); last month, they met with county staffers downtown, at which time they were told these block meetings were in the works. Their new website is westseattleraingardens.com. Its front page exhorts neighbors, “If you have questions or concerns about the Barton CSO project, please don’t remain silent. Silence implies acceptance. Please attend the Open Houses, ask the hard questions and carefully note how your questions are answered – or not.” The site includes a “Take Action” page which links to an online petition asking King County Executive Dow Constantine to stop the project, currently scheduled to start construction next year.

(Screen grab of what City Light showed at the peak of this morning’s outage)
2:16 AM, FIRST REPORT: After seeing a “wires down” call on 31st SW turn up on the 911 log, we started checking the Seattle City Light system-status map to see if anyone was out of power. Nothing has ever shown on the map, but we’ve received a few scattered reports of power having been out for an indeterminate amount of time – California/Juneau, High Point, Fairmount. If you happened to notice yours go out, let us know where and for how long – thanks!

2:26 AM UPDATE: We have a Beach Drive outage report via Twitter. Our power has not gone out, not even a flicker, here in Upper Fauntleroy, for what it’s worth. (One minute later) It’s now on the map – City Light says 1,340+ customers (homes/businesses) affected but that may be an underestimate, since their map isn’t showing areas in Alki where we’re hearing from people.

2:38 AM UPDATE: Now we’re getting reports it’s back on, at least for some. Thanks to everybody for the comments, texts (206-293-6302 any time, which is also our 24/7 voice line), tweets, Facebook posts, etc. – since the SCL map lagged on this one, your alerts are how we got the word AND that in turn helped inform everyone else out there that it wasn’t just them. Whenever we find out what caused this, we’ll add the info – not sure if that info will be available over the weekend, but we’ll try.

3:10 AM UPDATE: High Point and vicinity reports being back on. City Light map, meantime, is definitely lagging, because now it shows what must have been the peak of the outage – more than 4,700 homes/businesses out – a bit earlier. We’re taking a screengrab and will add it atop this story, for posterity’s sake.

3:20 AM UPDATE: City Light news release confirms the peak tally of 4,700+ and indeed blames it on the “wires down” incident, now described as a “pole fire” near SW Findlay/30th SW.

ORIGINAL 10:35 AM REPORT: Just getting notes from people who live/work in Highland Park. Not sure yet how widespread – it’s not on the Seattle City Light system-status map so we’re checking with them directly.

(Screen grab of affected area – except for Pathfinder, an isolated spot shown on the live map)
10:40 AM: Peter Clarke at Seattle City Light tells us the cause is that branches have fallen onto a line – almost 1,000 homes and businesses are affected. A commenter says Pathfinder K-8 is in the outage zone too. Restoration could take as little as an hour, or up to four hours, according to Clarke, who says a crew is on the way. (The outage is mapped now, too.)

11:07 AM UPDATE: The City Light map shows some spots in South Park are affected too (that’s also been mentioned in discussion on the WSB Facebook page). Pathfinder is apparently an isolated spot in Pigeon Point, which otherwise does not appear to be affected. If you’re in the outage zone, let us know when your power’s back – thanks! (And thanks again to everyone who sent word of this quickly, even before SCL had it mapped.)

11:35 AM UPDATE: Some are apparently back on, per SCL map. We went over to Highland Park Elementary after hearing they had lost power – they are continuing with classes, and all’s well otherwise.

12:02 PM UPDATE: Between the SCL map and comments, sounds/looks like just about everyone is back on. Let us know if you’re not.

As the county gets closer to building a million-gallon underground storage tank across the street from Lowman Beach Park, in hopes of reducing combined-sewer overflows from Murray Pump Station, the project’s next Design Advisory Group meeting has been announced: 6:30 pm Thursday at Fauntleroy Church (9140 California SW). The county has linked meeting-related documents from its calendar page, including the agenda, the project timeline through this December, and a “preliminary design feedback summary” – find it all here.

(Screengrab from City Light map, when outage affected 187 customers)
10:45 AM: Thanks to Stu for letting us know about this outage; there was a “wires down” call in the 1900 block of Bonair in Upper Alki around 9 am, and now, an outage too. The City Light map says 187 homes are without power as of about half an hour ago, and they’re not sure yet when it’ll be restored.

11:44 AM UPDATE: Stu says his power is back, and the City Light map confirms the outage is down to 7 residences.

(Scroll down for newest info on big outage – mostly OUTSIDE WS – and its effects)

(Photo added 2:24 pm – Spokane/Chelan light, apparently the west edge of the outage)
FIRST REPORT, 1:37 PM: WSB’ers are telling us of a power outage stretching from Georgetown to SODO – but the City Light system-status map isn’t showing anything yet. We’re going to see what we can find out via other methods. Just got a note mentioning Harbor Island’s out, too.

1:43 PM UPDATE: Just talked to Scott Thomsen at Seattle City Light. Their “outage management system” is not letting people in for updates and that’s why the map hasn’t updated – but they apparently have TWO separate feeders out, totalling more than 6,300 customers (homes/businesses). No idea yet what caused it, but crews are being dispatched, Scott says.

1:51 PM UPDATE: WSB’ers are mentioning other areas in comments too, such as Beacon Hill. SDOT points out via Twitter that the signals in SODO are out along major streets such as 1st and 4th.

1:54 PM UPDATE: City Light just tweeted that 28,000 homes/businesses are affected:

2:03 PM UPDATE: The City Light map is working now. Screengrab in a minute. It verifies Harbor Island is affected (we have a crew headed that way, too).

2:10 PM UPDATE: Our crew checking out Harbor Island says the intersection by Chelan Café is out, just west of the low bridge. Chelan Cafe itself has closed their restaurant, but the bar is still open. Meantime, if you have kids in schools in the outage zone – which does NOT include any of West Seattle, to our knowledge, beyond the Chelan Cafe area and Harbor Island – Seattle Public Schools has tweeted this:

Seattle City Light now says the problem is at the “South Substation” (3839 4th Ave. South, the big SCL facility right off the ramp from the eastbound West Seattle Bridge) and that some might not get their power back till 6 pm.

2:34 PM UPDATE: As many commenters are pointing out, the power’s come back on for most. Scott from City Light tells us about 600 homes/businesses are left to be restored. He says the problem happened when a power line that was being worked on at the South Station touched another piece of equipment and caused a short that led to the outage. Nobody was hurt.

3:01 PM UPDATE: And one last update from City Light via Twitter: