And not a drop to flush. OK, apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but that’s how I felt Monday night.
I had just returned from the West Coast and had gone to bed early when a neighbor called to say that my driveway was flooding Knox Street. “Wha-a-a-a?” I replied, half awake. She told me she had called the water folks already so I went out to see what was up. Sure enough, my driveway WAS flooding the street (see photo below):
The first thing I did was check my water meter to see if I was paying for all that waste. Turns out I wasn’t. My meter was stuck on one number, which isn’t surprising since I haven’t done an actual commode flush in two months, using reclaimed shower water for that purpose. But my meager conservation had been rapidly erased by an aging, unmaintained water main running under my driveway. I watched as thousands of gallons of water flowed out of a hole (see red arrow) and ran toward the street.
In about a half hour a city water worker arrived and asked where my meter was. I assured him I’d already checked it so he went down the street to check a manhole and came back to say, yes, it’s a broken water main and he’d have to get a crew out to fix it. I didn’t know if that meant tomorrow or next week, but I was too tired and went back to sleep. The next morning everything was fixed and they’d put new gravel over the hole so my wife and I could get out of our driveway.
Still recovering from the shock of all that water going down the storm drain Monday night, I read in this morning’s News & Observer the following:
DURHAM – A water main leak will close the intersection of Broad and Knox streets starting at 7:30 a.m. today.
City officials think a small leak is bubbling through a crack in the sidewalk, but they say that because of the drought, even small leaks must be repaired immediately. It is not clear how long the leak has been there.
That made me recall with pique City Councilwoman Diane Catotti’s nanny lecture the other day about how people aren’t saving enough water for her tastes. Meanwhile, Durham apparently loses more than 3 million gallons per day due to old, outdated, rusting and deteriorating pipes.
My questions of the day: What has the City Council done in the past, oh, 20 years to make sure that the water-delivery infrastructure received a rolling upgrade? Is the scolding of the public for too much flushing just an attempt to avert our attention from what seems a major abdication of their responsibilities for water services? If rates are supposed to fund improvements, where has that money gone, if not for those improvements?
Our council members look a bit silly complaining about flushing when millions of gallons a day leak into storm sewers and into the ground because they have neglected to ensure that our pipes have been maintained. But all the incumbents got re-elected, so at least there’s that.
