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2001-06-21 10:02
An Old-Fashioned Hole-Digging
Tino and I seem to have set off a flurry of activity behind the house.
There has been something back there that looked like a sinkhole for a few weeks now. It's a depression about one foot in diameter with a hole at the bottom. The hole has a diameter of about three inches. Last night, we noticed that it was filled with water and was actually pooling *more* water in the low areas back there. We pulled our deed, found out it wasn't our property (actually, we already knew that) and that the water people had an easement there. We decided that something should be done, and we called the Fairfax County Water Authority thinking that a water main might be leaking. They said they'd be out within the hour.
Here is the hole and the water running away from it and collecting
They were not out within the hour, but that's not really a problem anyway. OK, we weren't looking all the time. Maybe they took a peek, decided it wasn't urgent and didn't need a night crew.
There are a bunch of relevant issues tied to this. This area has been used by Fox-Seko (building the parking lot where the garage was torn down) to move heavy equipment and vans full of construction dudes. There is an outdoor light fixture that has been the subject of a great deal of attention from Dominion Virginia Power, and this attention also involved moving heavy equipment over this area. I would like to point out that this area is not a road and was never meant to have cars, trucks and back hoes driven over it all the time.
The next relevant bit: Repaving. The road behind our house has been repaved over the last week or so. This involves grinding and other road work that causes the ground to shake. You're thinking what I'm thinking now, right? A pipe cracked from the repeated weight and all the shaking made the crack bigger.
When I went out there to talk to the cops[1], I noticed on my way back[2] that the puddle had clarified, so I looked closely at it. It looked *so* cool. You could see the water bubbling up. It looked like it was boiling in there (which it wasn't, of course). I told Tino to come look, and he said that it wouldn't look anywhere near as cool on video and declined to tape it for me. As I said, it's very dark out there, so I that made sense to me, and as such, there's no cool clip for you to watch.
This morning about 7am, the water authority showed up and started pumping and digging. With a hand pump and a shovel, actually. We went out and talked to them, and they said it was not their pipe, but a drain pipe. Later, they rang the doorbell and asked for the phone number of the cluster management. He was out there talking on a cell phone about 20 minutes later. Now, an hour later, there are paint marks everywhere as Verizon, Comcast, Dominion Virginia Power and the Water Authority have all pissed orange paint all over each of their territories. There's a lot of yellow caution tape, and soon there will be a back hoe. Oh joy.
You can see the broken pipe itself. It's that thing by the hole that looks like a log.
You know what this means, of course. This means it's the cluster's problem, and that means that we'll (the cluster, not us personally) be paying for it. In spite of the fact that the stress on the pipes was not caused by any fault of ours. Damn it. I hope that us being the squeaky wheel made it cheaper to fix before it became a torrent of water.
And you know what comes with an old-fashioned hole-digging, don't you? Donuts, that's what. I can't make up shit this good, folks.
It's all these damn trucks delivering colossal donuts, damn it.
I had another experience with a Virginia county on Tuesday. Arlington has been dunning me for a ticket that I don't recall getting. I got more documentation indicating that it was an inspection-non-compliance ticket and that I had paid $15 on it. Why the hell would I do that? I haven't a clue, and I also didn't recall my car ever being driven without a valid inspection. I told them about the inspection thing, and they said I had to call the police to get the ticket pulled and copied for me.
I called the police with the citation number. They faxed it to me in less than 10 minutes. This is a ticket that was three years old, people. This is incredible efficiency. Once I saw the ticket, everything clarified and I mailed them their demanded funds.
I have to say I'm impressed. It just goes to show that being efficient instead of Byzantine and bureaucratic is the best way into the pockets of the citizenry.
[1]All the 6pm-6am parking ban signs had been taken down, but they were obviously working right behind our house. I wanted to make sure my car wasn't going to disappear after I went to sleep. This was possibly the nicest police officer I've ever encountered. Usually, they are vaguely hostile to me. This guy was frickin' Officer Friendly.