Cleveland Parker

Anyone traveling down Porter St. NW between Connecticut and Williamsburg in the past few weeks has noticed the pitiful condition of the road. Before taking a nice jaunt over to Columbia Heights or onto Rock Creek Parkway, drivers are met with a series of bumps. As you can see, a rather long scar in the road starts around 2501 Porter St. and continues to Williamsburg Lane. This unusual road irregularity has served as a veritable 30 yard pothole ready to damage cars and bicyclists.

So what’s the cause of this enormous winter pothole? Water system upgrades. Starting this past June, Sagres Construction of Alexandria started a critical project to repair water mains and replace fire hydrants.

The project got off to a conspicuous start this summer, when multiple neighbors complained the construction company did not follow DC regulations for establishing its “no parking zones”. On numerous occasions in June and July the company plunked down its “emergency no parking” signs without the proper notice. The company was required, by its agreement with the city, to provide 72 hours notice. Unfortunately, its signs read that their “emergency no parking” rights began in April. Had the cones been up this entire time, there would have been no issues. However, Sagres would randomly put up the cones, snaring unknowing residents and visitors. Police saw the April start date, probably not knowing the cones were just placed that day, and began ticketing liberally on Porter St for weeks.

Since then, the project has progressed neatly as the mains were fixed all the way up to the intersection of Connecticut and Quebec St. Currently, there does not seem to be any activity on the road, nor has there been for weeks. All that’s left is a rather large scar in the road and a series of duplicate fire hydrants that are covered saying “out of service”. Not surprisingly, many people seem scared to park in front of these out of service fire hydrants, probably fearing Sagres will come along and pull the cover off of them.  These “duplicate” hydrants have been seen flooding the street (and occasionally the sidewalk), I am not sure if this is part of the system upgrade.

Because of this we reached out to Maria Gigova, Project Manager for the Department of Engineering and Technical Services. Ms. Gigova was kind enough to promptly respond to our request for information stating that “at this time only temporary pavement is installed associated with the new water main installations at this location and our contractor will replace the areas in the roadway where this installation is failing as soon as possible.” Additionally, “all affected areas in the roadway will be re-paved and restored per the DDOT standard requirements after all new water main installations are completed and tested.” The new estimated timeline has been pushed back (this project was originally supposed to be completed in 2011) to March 2012.

The one bonus of this problem is that people are slowing down so much for the large pothole that the city’s new speed camera must be incredibly inefficient.

Update: Two days following this posting most of the long scar that we discuss above was paved over making for a smoother ride along Porter St.