The West Virginia Avenue Wetland is gone - or is it?

For years, there has been a leak of some sort coming up through the sidewalk on West Virginia Avenue NE, just north of the intersection with Fenwick Street, in front of property used by the DC Department of Public Works.

This is what it looked like for a long time:

The "West Virginia Avenue Wetland"

Water constantly flowed down the sidewalk. The water had been sitting for so long that cattails and other aquatic plants had colonized the walkway. As you can see in the photo above, the city's solution was to throw a few cones in the pond and call it a day.

I complained about this regularly on Twitter, mostly to DC Water, assuming this was their problem. They tested the water, though, and asserted that it was not coming from one of their pipes.

I figured this wasn't possible. The water had to be coming from a municipally-owned source, and DC Water controls all of that in the city. But, they're the experts!

The morning I took the photo above, I included the mayor's Twitter handle in my semi-regular complaint. Surprisingly, I received a direct message shortly after letting me know that the executive's office would be getting to the bottom of this issue quickly. I guess you just have to get your timing right, sometimes!

After a few days, crews were there digging up the area around the leak. Jaime asked the workers if they had found anything, but they treated it like a state secret and wouldn't talk.

Construction crews dig to find the source of the leak.

Finally, a few days later, this email arrived from Matt Desjardins, who works in the mayor's office:

Hello – Mayor Gray asked me to follow up with you regarding some standing water on the sidewalk near a DPW facility in NE. I know that this has been an issue you have been looking to resolve for some time now and I apologize if any of the below information is redundant. 

Here is what we currently know. DPW is working with its partner agencies to address the issue: 

· DPW has hired a contractor to address the flooding of the sidewalk at 1725 West Virginia Avenue, NE (Fleet campus). The contractor uncovered an abandoned storm water drain that originates at a manhole and dead ends into multi chambered structure under the sidewalk. When it rains, all of the runoff water backs up in the manhole and bubbles up onto the sidewalk and street on West Virginia Avenue, NE. There is no access for the runoff into the sewer system. 

· The current DC Water regulations require that there be either an oil/water separator or a storm water management system on the property. Neither system is in place for this section of the campus. 

· One possible solution is to have DC Water build a storm water management system as it builds the new parking lot. DC Water needs to use the Fleet campus to construct a 110 foot shaft to address the Bloomingdale flooding issue. DC Water will construct a new parking lot for DPW to replace the parking lot where the shaft will be used for the tunnel. 

· Unfortunately, a solution may be a few months away.

The upshot is this: there's a drainage system under the sidewalk that apparently does not connect to the regular storm sewer system. It could get "fixed" when DC Water works on the tunnel that will ultimately divert storm water from Bloomingdale.

Isn't infrastructure fun?

After construction to cap the abandoned storm drain.

Carry-out menu from...the Department of Public Works?

Is your supercan's lid, wheels, or lift bar (the metal bar halfway down the front of the can) broken? Get in touch with DPW via the 311.dc.gov website ASAP, and you'll get it repaired for free!

The note DPW left at our back gate.

Recently, a crack on the lid of our supercan had been growing, and the stress of being rapidly flipped open and closed by DPW workers every week finally caused it to break on the Election Day pickup. The next day, I asked DPW via their twitter feed who I needed to contact to get the lid repaired.

A quick response reminded me that it's an option on the 311 website. I went there on November 8 and put in a request for "Supercan - Repair," unsure how long it would take to get a new lid.

Sometime on November 16, a DPW contractor put a new lid on our supercan and left the card to the right (which says the recycling cart was repaired, but that's not true) stuffed into our rear gate.

I didn't notice the card until the next morning. From the bedroom window, it looked like a carry-out menu. "Carry-outs are leaving their menus at the front AND back doors of houses now, huh?" I thought. I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn't the case!

I left a positive comment for DPW on the grade.dc.gov website.

The service was relatively prompt and totally painless. If your supercan (or recycling cart!) needs repair, don't delay. Take advantage of this simple service your tax dollars provide.

Broken Scooter Theory

This scooter has been in our alley since Monday, March 22. Well, variations on the theme scooter, since each day more is missing, and more of its innards leak out into the Anacostia Watershed.

 

This is scooter, and scooter's friends, chair and wastebasket

But in all seriousness, the fact that this mess is still in the alley is painfully absurd. We called 311 on Tuesday to alert MPD of suspicion of stolen property. When the scooter was still there Wednesday morning—albeit slightly thinner—we submitted an online service request for alley cleaning via DPW. I think its safe to assume most folks reading this are tangentially familiar with "Broken Windows Theory." If not, at its nexus is the idea that if we fix problems in neighborhoods when they are small (i.e. literal broken windows, graffiti, litter), the chance for further petty crime and the potential for serious crime can be deterred. Don't fix the small stuff and, well, don't be surprised when problems mount on top of one another, the next one larger than the last.

So we have a presumably stolen scooter in our alley. If whomever deposited it wanted the tires before they dumped it, my guess is they would have taken them. Instead, someone else figured they could take them. And more bulk trash has piled up. So the cycle of broken windows, if even on the smallest level, is beginning to ramp up in our alley. And we can't get the city to help us by simply doing the job we pay them to do.