A surprise water outage, and what it revealed

The water shutoff was related to the sewer work that has closed Albemarle Street east of Connecticut Avenue.

by Marlene Berlin

Late on Monday, September 30th, several neighbors temporarily lost water service. It was a planned shutoff, and a test for DC Water’s Soapstone sewer relining project. For many of those affected, it was also a surprise.

Unpredictability is a given; DC Water is tasked with maintaining aging infrastructure. The sewer lines it has spent the past two and a half years rehabilitating are well over a century old. And every time DC Water digs, it’s likely to discover a new wrinkle. For example, its excavation of an Albemarle Street manhole being rebuilt for the final phase of the Soapstone project found an “unforeseen challenge”: a 72-inch storm drain running directly under the manhole.

What DC Water can control is how it keeps the community informed about upcoming work. The agency told ANC 3F commissioners and Council member Matt Frumin’s office of the unexpected storm sewer in a September 20th email, which also mentioned the scheduled water shutoff on the 30th.

“The purpose for this test shut is to assess area customers’ pressure and the way in which it might be impacted once we have scheduled our future work,” wrote Community Affairs Director Emanuel Briggs. Briggs also said affected customers would be warned via door hangers 48 hours in advance of the 10 p.m. shutoff.

Here’s what I’ve learned in email communications with DC Water officials, and in conversations with neighbors:

The shutoff was supposed to impact only residents of Albemarle Street between 30th Street and Connecticut Avenue. But residents of the 2900 block of Albemarle and a block up 30th Street also discovered they had no water, either by turning on their taps after the 10 p.m. shutoff, or seeing the telltale signs of a shutoff the next morning: brown water in their toilets; water spitting out of their faucets.

My home on 30th Street was impacted. The first thing I did in the morning was check DC Water’s Water Service Outage map. It showed the active work zone on Albemarle Street, but nothing specific about an outage. I then submitted a “Low Water Pressure Service Request.” (The next day I got an email that the case was closed with no explanation.) I checked DC Water’s Soapstone Sewer project website to see if I’d missed an announcement. The most recent update was a public meeting in August 2023.

I also called DC Water’s 24/7 Command Center, and was instructed to flush out excess air and the brown sediment by turning on a cold water faucet at the lowest level of my house and letting it run for 15 minutes. I followed the instructions.

Otherwise, the Command Center seemed to be as much in the dark as the residents of my block. The operator I spoke to said he was not sure what was going on, but that someone else had called a bit earlier to report the issue. The Command Center also told at least one neighbor that it was a water main break. Yet another was told nothing was going on. She showed me cloudy water from her tap, and was convinced the water was not safe to drink. (As it turns out, those were air bubbles.)

Finally, the Command Center got the real story, and told another neighbor the issues were the result of the test. She was given the same directions to deal with the air in the pipes and the sediment, but in the afternoon of Thursday, October 3rd, a DC Water rep knocked on her door and informed her they were opening up fire hydrants. It was the only way to knock the air out of the system. She was still seeing air bubbles in her tap water on Friday, October 4th.

The test shutoff did give DC Water some critical information. Besides the larger-than-expected outage area, the crew discovered four water valves in need of repair. That work will require additional water shutoffs, plus the one that will be required for the relining of the last segment of Soapstone sewer pipe.

DC Water can do more to inform the neighborhood. At least one resident of the planned outage area did not get a door hanger. Some, but not all, received email notices. There was no wider public announcement. And it appears that the agency’s own Command Center was not informed in advance of the September 30th shutoff.

In the future, the website created for informing the community about the project’s progress needs to be revived as a main communication vehicle for regular updates and alerts due to the unexpected, and with a sign up for email updates. Other DC Water websites, like the outage map, could link to this project when unexpected issues occur.

The schedule for the upcoming work is yet to be determined, but DC Water’s Briggs told me in an email that no shutdowns will occur over upcoming holidays unless there is an emergency. If there is one, I hope that DC Water will let more of the neighborhood know.