Seattle Press on Line - Upper Fremont Battles Rising Muck

Upper Fremont Battles Rising Muck

By Laurel Holliday

Mike Nguyen (left) of Mid-Mountain Contractors with Francis Avenue resident Craig Ellestad. Harold Bakke photo.

Jan 03, 2002 -- December downpours brought some nervous days and sleepless nights for residents of the 4100 block of Francis Avenue North, when the normally quiet, dead-end street came to resemble a war zone. For nearly a week, jackhammers pounded asphalt, a giant yellow caterpillar clawed into earth, and a seemingly endless stream of trucks hauled mud and cement up and down the narrow street, forcing cars to make their way along the sidewalks.

It all began on December 14, when Gisela Calabria went down to her basement to throw a load of laundry in the washer and discovered brown, smelly water gushing up through the floor drain. A few minutes later, it was six inches deep. She ran next door to consult her neighbor, Harold Bakke, who advised calling a plumber. She called six, before she found one who could respond to the emergency. By the time he got there and set up a sump pump, the brown liquid was a foot deep.

A few minutes later, the plumber and Bakke noticed miniature geysers spurting up through manhole covers in the street. They began to suspect that the stinky, brown water problem wasn't confined to Calabria's house. Bakke called the Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater Division. Then he went door to door on Francis Avenue North, peering through basement windows. He discovered water rising in another neighbor's house and called her at work to alert her.

A giant caterpillar chews into Francis Avenue North. Martha Bakke photo.

Half an hour after Bakke's call, SPU workers arrived and found that the storm runoff, which was supposed to be about 20 feet down, was only 3 feet below the street. They set up an emergency diversion pipe to route rainwater away from Francis Avenue North and prevent any more homes from flooding.

"It was great that right away the City came out and set up a bypass," says Calabria. "They had to stay all night turning on the pump every 45 minutes for two nights, the poor men."

Grateful neighbors brought coffee and cookies to the city workers during the cold, wet nights. But, in the end, SPU had to call in a private company, Kirkland-based Mid-mountain Contractors, because the problem was more than city workers could handle.

According to Ray Buonrostro, one of the Mid-mountain workers assigned to the emergency repair, "It was so severe, we were the only ones in the area who had the necessary equipment."

Workers jackhammered open a big patch of the street. Then the giant yellow caterpillar spent days chomping away at asphalt and dirt, trying to reach the sewer line, 28 feet below the surface. Meanwhile, workers had to build a form to keep the walls of their excavation from caving in. Looking like the world's biggest bathtub, it took expert calculations and steady nerves to lower it into place.

The moral of this story is to memorize the numbers of six plumbers with sump pumps and also the emergency number for Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater Division: 386-1800.

Neighbors were so impressed with the operation that they took photos documenting what Martha Bakke calls "the delicate precision of a huge machine."

Once the form was in place, Mid-mountain workers descended into the three-story-deep pit and hand dug the last six inches of dirt off the sewer pipe, ever mindful that they were surrounded by gas and water lines.

"If we'd hit one of them, that would have meant a whole new bunch of problems," said Buonrostro.

To prevent similar emergencies, SPU regularly inspects Seattle's 1,491 miles of combined sewer and sanitary lines. It's far easier to fix a minor crack in the waste water system than to deal with a major rupture.

"I guess they missed this one," says Buonrostro.

In fact, it turns out that the Francis Avenue North sewer line had very recently been inspected. Jessica Ryan, speaking for the Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater Division, said that, in the middle of November, a city-hired contractor inspected the line with a closed circuit television probe and found a break in need of extensive repair. Even though the sewer line was built in 1909, and maintenance records show that it has had a high frequency of root removal repairs, the contractor told SPU that the break "did not appear to be an immediate threat to public health and safety."

Before Seattle Public Utilities scheduled the much-needed repair, the mainline collapsed, necessitating a complicated and expensive operation. In addition to overtime wages paid to SPU workers, Mid-Mountain Contractors operations manager Dan Browning says that his company will bill the city of Seattle somewhere between $60,000 to $70,000. And the City will also be billed for the cost of replacing water-soaked possessions, dehumidifying basements, and rebuilding damaged interior walls because homeowners' insurance will not cover the damages.

Despite the collapse of the sewer on Francis Avenue North, SPU's Ryan has confidence in Seattle's underground infrastructure.

"While it's true that the majority of Seattle's sanitary and combined storm/sewer pipes are nearing 100 years in age, most of them are in good shape and don't need to be replaced... This type of situation or break does not happen often in the City of Seattle," she said.

SPU's director of Communications J. Paul Blake is not quite so sanguine about our sewers. "We said that when the quake happened [last February] it would take some time for things to manifest," he said.

Sewer pipes that were thought to have sustained only minimal damage during the earthquake could become more and more of a problem as rainwater softens the dirt around them, allowing them to expand, crack open or even collapse.

Laurel Holliday writes books and articles from her home office in Fremont.

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