AS REMAINING
INFRASTRUCTURE
CRUMBLES AWAY,
WSSC TAKES PHONES
OFF THE HOOK
Monopoly Utility Lets Broken Bethesda
Water Main Run for 2 Days and Counting
And they say they're going to charge us an additional $20 a month? Monopoly water utility WSSC has apparently taken its phones off the hook, as residents are unable to report a water main break at the intersection of Ridgefield Road and Kirkwood in Bethesda.
Avoid this intersection! I have been on the scene myself yesterday and Tuesday. By today, the entire area around the intersection has a heavy coating of ice and black ice on it. Dodging cars and using my flashlight, I located two little fountains shooting up. They are only a few inches in height - one at the curb by the 4th Presbyterian Church, and the other in the middle of the road.
These appeared today, and the road has begun to crack and buckle in places. Certainly, nearby residents called this in on Tuesday. I tried to call myself last night...
The WSSC "emergency" number put me on hold for 22 minutes. They never answered.
I hung up and tried again. The same thing happened again.
Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that the WSSC has taken its phones off the hook.
Someone could be killed if a car goes out of control on that ice. Not to mention that nearby homes could be flooded if this water main break continues to be ignored by the WSSC.
It's outrageous.
I'll check it out again today, and report back. But this is what happens when our county government fails to exercise leadership in its oversight of the WSSC, and what happens when we have no competition or accountability in our utilities.
4 comments:
WSSC had 130 broken water mains (just in the Bethesda, Wheaton and Silver Spring areas) from 1/15/09 - 1/26/09. WSSC had 412 broken mains Commission wide for the same time period. There were two little spouts comming up in the road? How about the ones that were flooding peoples houses or tearing up the road to the point that it was impassable? Two little spouts- I could pee harder than that. There are barely 10 crews (3 people per crew) covering the Bethesda and Silver Spring area. This main was reported on 1/20/09 at 3:00pm and was fixed on 1/22/09 at 9:30pm, two days is pretty good considering the amount of breaks there were. People like you love to complain about things they don't know anything about. WSSC fixes the mains as they quick as they can and they prioritize each break by severity. They had people working around the clock fixing these breaks and most crews worked 16 hours each day including Sat, Sun, MLK and Inauguration Day. Most people refused to take a day off, when offered, until these breaks were fixed. There are very dedicated employees who work hard for the customer only to have people like you complain that nothing's being done. Open your eyes and close your mouth!
Thanks for your comment.
I would like to make clear that I have not at any time criticized the crews who are repairing the water mains.
They have done a fine job under the circumstances.
My complaints have been entirely about the leadership of the WSSC.
Your comment points out another issue, which is the need for WSSC to hire more crews.
The concern about the water main break was legitimate. Not only was the resulting ice a hazard, but - as you know - the break could have escalated and flooded nearby homes.
My main point was that the phones were not being answered, and therefore customers near the break had no way to know if WSSC knew about it.
Again, if you read my original post, you will find no criticism of the actual repair crews. If there is a misunderstanding about the topic of my post in that regard, I apologize for any confusion.
I was simply reporting the confusion of nearby customers who could not get through to the WSSC hotline, and were concerned that the break could eventually become more serious.
The problem with what you said, "monopoly utility lets broken Bethesda water main run for two days and counting" makes it look like the WSSC crews are sitting around doing nothing unconcerned with the broken main. You also said "It's outrageous" what's outrageous? The break being ignored by WSSC? There was no way WSSC could have responded to repair this break any faster. (Read the Gazette, January was a record month for broken mains at WSSC). It was checked out when the first call came in and determined it could hold, meaning get the more severe breaks first. Imagine if you called the fire dept. to get your cat out of a tree and they didn't show up and you raised a bunch of hell only to find out that they were extinguishing a high rise apt fire. Good analogy?
I understand your concern about not getting through on the phone. But try to understand this...there are probably 3 or 4 people answering the phones after hours. With the amount of broken mains and other emergency calls comming in they're getting, at least, 100 calls an hour. This may be too low of an estimate if you consider 20 people could call in about the same broken main. Thats a lot of calls.
Your complaints about the leadership of WSSC is fine; however, they have nothing to do with when each break will be fixed first. They have other people in place for that. They could hire more crews though. 10 years ago there were 20 crews of 4 or 5 covering the same area. In 2001 they cut the crews in half, WSSC wide, to do the same amount of(actually more) work.
But how will they afford more crews?
I think we are in agreement about the crews making the actual repairs. Like the PEPCO crews, they have always done a great job in bad weather conditions. I've complained about the leadership of PEPCO as well over the years. But I've never complained about the workers who come out to fix the problems. Both utilities have less crews on hand than they should.
I actually was on the scene when the WSSC crew arrived to fix this break. So I know and appreciate the cold temperatures they were working in. And it was fixed in just a few hours.
It really was the communication issue that was the emphasis of my post. Because no live or automated operator would answer, customers were not aware of the other breaks. And also could not know that WSSC was aware of this one.
PEPCO has an automated system where they can tell you that they know of the outage, and what the estimated time of repair is.
That was all I was hoping to find out by calling the WSSC hotline.
With no information to go on, the concern of nearby residents was that this could escalate. There have been other small breaks like this in the past, and when they were not repaired, they got worse and eventually there was a loss of water pressure.
That was the genuine concern from which I was writing that day.
How they will afford to hire more crews is a very good question. PEPCO has called in crews from utilities in other states in the past, but WSSC may have a different policy. It is going to take a tremendous amount of federal bailout money to get the system in order.
Local elected officials have not addressed the long-standing problems for years. That is a failure on their part. When there is no competition, government has to speak for the consumer.
Anyway, I hope that you understand what my complaint was, and that it certainly was not meant as a criticism of the repair crews in any way.
And I certainly welcome other people's opinions here regarding the WSSC or any other issue I'm writing about. I'm trying to not only cover the important issues in the county, but in a case like this, I was also trying to help the community by warning drivers about the ice in that intersection.
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