By Nicole Flatow
Residents on 210th Street in Bayside had been bearing the burden while city workers repaired sewers and hydrants between 29th and 33rd avenues over the past few weeks.
But homeowners in that section of Bayside like Ruth and Arthur Lehrer, who had been spending their daytime hours without water for about two weeks, got their water back earlier than expected last Thursday.
“I think as a result of my complaining, we did get our water back … probably a day or two earlier than we would have,” said Arthur Lehrer, who is a retired engineer and has been involved in construction and inspection work.
Lehrer believes his background prompted the Department of Design and Construction to take his complaints more seriously.
What the department did, Lehrer said, was finish work on 210th Street before starting work on the side streets as they had originally planned to do.
Others who spend daytime hours at home had been bothered by the long spell without water. One 85-year-old woman, who wished to remain anonymous, had been living without water or air conditioning in the 90-degree weather because her air-conditioning requires water to function.
These and other residents who live closer to 29th Street were told early last week that they would have to wait as long as several weeks to regain access to water between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on work days.
The problem, explained Lehrer, was that each time the DDC worked on a section of pipe, the homeowners in that section had to turn off their water. And because there is only one valve to cover the whole stretch of pipe between 33rd and 29th avenues, residents on those four blocks were required to continue turning off the water until their section of pipe had been repaired. That left residents closer to 29th Avenue with a long wait before their water returned.
Lehrer said the department should have installed an intermediate valve while they replaced the water main, so that the residents on 29th Avenue would only have to turn off their water half the time.
“It would have taken some extra effort for them to put in intermediate temporary shutoff valves so that the houses at the lower end of this line are not subjected to five or seven days of no water,” Lehrer said. But it would have been worth it, he said.
DDC spokesman John Spavins said the circumstances were more complicated. It is not a question of adding a temporary valve, according to Spavins, but rather of getting a new valve. The existing valve dates back to 1914, he said, and there is no place for a temporary valve to go.
“There are times we put in a temporary valve when we need to just shut off the water, but we need a whole new valve because the valve that’s there is defective,” he said.
Spavins said he regretted that residents on 210th Street had to spend so many days without water, but he had urged people to be patient with a project that would take longer than originally anticipated.
In addition to fixing the sewer pipes, workers were repairing hydrants that they had discovered were very old.
“There’s quite a bit of work to be done. This was a sewer project and then hydrant work was added,” Spavins said.
The inconvenience did not subside once the water was turned back on in the afternoon, said Lehrer, who pointed out that the water was discolored with sediment. But at least Lehrer had a filter in his home and had been using only the filtered water since the pipe work began.
One neighbor was in the midst of selling her home, and she said the pipe work was making her house less attractive to potential buyers. She had pails of water on the floor and was unable to air condition her home.
Still, this 85-year-old widow was grateful for the help she received from the department. She called the DDC phone number for help turning off her water, and a representative from the department came to her house to show her how.
“I have to say, they were very gracious,” she said.
A few blocks down from the pipe work, four houses near 35th Avenue were evacuated after a gas pipe was damaged Aug. 20.
City Councilman Tony Avella (D-Bayside), who called for a meeting last week with the Department of Environmental Protection, Con Edison and a city contractor, called the leak and another gas main rupture in Bayside Hills “disconcerting.”
“These gas lines can have serious consequences,” Avella said. “I think we need to be sure that we’re providing proper information to the contractors.”
Reach reporter Nicole Flatow by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
