A section of Albemarle Street NW east of Connecticut Avenue has been closed since September 9th.
The closed section of Albemarle Street east of Connecticut Avenue will remain closed to vehicle traffic for the next six months.
DC Water, during ANC 3F’s January 14th meeting, revealed its latest timeline and an end-of-July completion date for the final phase of the Soapstone Valley sewer project that began in March 2022.
Only one 325-foot sewer pipe segment remains to be relined, but first, DC Water must enlarge the manhole on Albemarle to perform the work.
Prior to the street closure in September, DC Water estimated the work would take two or three months. Then, the discovery of a storm sewer directly beneath the project site sent planners back to the drawing board.
DC Water’s sewer project relined around 6,000 feet of pipe laid in the valley well over a century ago. It was also a stormwater control project aimed at preventing stormwater erosion from damaging the rehabilitated sewer pipes.
The DC Department of Energy and the Environment (DOEE) is about to embark on another stormwater control project, this one in a gully that extends into the Soapstone Valley from the Linnean Avenue dead-end to the north.
If this sounds familiar to you, DOEE completed a similar project at the same location in 2015. But a storm shortly after that restoration’s completion felled some trees, and those, in turn, diverted stormwater away from the step pools that had been built to collect and slow the water as it flowed down into the park.
DOEE’s Matt English told ANC commissioners at the January meeting that the construction phase is to begin in February, and that this project is also expected to wrap up in July. Here’s the DOEE’s Linnean gully project website.