Water, water anywhere? Water, water anywhere? (January 28, 2004)

Lack of water pressure plagued Alma Place residents for nearly a month

by Jay Thorwaldson

Something ominous happened to the 106 residents of Alma Place in downtown Palo Alto Dec. 27.

Their water pressure mysteriously dropped -- and stayed dropped until late last week when two city utility officials visited and traced the problem to air pockets in the pipes.

One official, Morris White, supervisor of metering, worked with the building maintenance supervisor to re-bleed the lines, which seemed to solve most of the problems, according to Scott Bradshaw, assistant director of utilities engineering and operations.

"I used other people's showers," resident Peter Chaplin said of the water crisis.

Chaplin said he and other residents couldn't understand why it took nearly a month to get the situation fixed.

Dawna Williams, the manager of the complex and a resident, said she was equally perplexed. She said she complained as much as anyone -- to the city water utility and anyone else who would listen.

A plumbing contractor opened up a water main in mid-January and extracted "all this horrible sludge -- it was like 'Ghostbuster' slime," she said. "I can't believe we've been drinking water from those pipes."

But that didn't solve the problem. Bradshaw said the sludge was a normal buildup of fine silt -- the reason the city periodically flushes out water lines -- and not a health concern.

The Hetch Hetchy water system went to reservoir supplies last November while installing equipment for a new purification system. This could have contributed to a sludge buildup, Bradshaw said.

The upper floors of the four-story structure were especially hard hit.

"People in half the building can take a shower and the other half can take a bath, but it takes a long time to fill the tub," Williams said before the city officials' visit. Residents have time to make coffee, iron clothes and even do housework while the tub fills, she noted.

"The last month has been a nightmare for me," she said. "It's been very cumbersome."

Three different plumbing contractors, at a cost of about $6,000, were also puzzled, finally ascribing the problem to incoming water mains serving the complex, she said.

"We have holes all through the building where people have crawled in to inspect the pipes."

Williams said no one was able to explain some quirks, such as why some residents had hotter water than others. "Our boilers work -- they're just not getting enough water.

Williams suspects that work on the water mains under Alma Street last summer may be at the root of the problems. For 20 days there were periodic interruptions in water service.

Jay Thorwaldson can be e-mailed at jthorwaldson@paweekly.com

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