The water emergency in Albany is over. The water main line under South Lake Avenue near the intersection with Elberon Place has been repaired, restoring water service for the major water transmission line there. Citywide water restrictions have been lifted, but the street remains closed.
On August 2nd, a hole opened up along busy South Lake Avenue, swallowing a small SUV and prompting a citywide emergency. It was the second major infrastructure failure in the Washington Park neighborhood this year. Work crews have been on the site ever since.
Albany Water Board Commissioner Joe Coffey: "We finally were able to complete the reconnection of our 42-inch transmission main. That's certainly been a long journey for the residents in the neighborhood. We reconnected the main. We did a bacteriological test and pressure-tested it over the weekend and we out it back in service yesterday, ramped everything up at our filter plants and everything looked good, so we lifted the water restrictions yesterday at 3 o'clock, restored service in the town of Guilderland, and essentially at that point, the water emergency part of the project is over."
Work remains to be done. "Some reconnecting of some very local little 6-inch water mains right in that intersection that we disconnected to put the storm sewer in, and it's the low point of our transmission main, it's right at that intersection, and that's why there's some blowoff there. So the work that we're doing now is just to provide that blowoff when it has to be to take the water someplace and before that was a valve in a manhole in a trucks were, so we thought perhaps it might be prudent not to put that valve in the storm sewer area again, so we're actually gonna pipe that blowoff to Washington Park Lake."
NewsChannel 13 caught up with Steeve Pierre, the owner of the little red SUV that was the image of the sinkhole for news outlets worldwide. The Albany Med Student says he received a letter from a city attorney who cited a nearly 40-year-old case that found a municipality is not liable for property damage due to a water main break, unless officials knew there were problems. Albany is denying Pierre's claim and will not pay for his ruined Ford Explorer. "Yeah, it was a freak accident. It happened. OK. I wasn't mad about that. But now I'm upset at the reaction that I got."
Pierre raised $4,500 through online crowdsourcing and received an undisclosed sum from his insurance company, not enough, he says, to purchase a reliable replacement vehicle. The city wouldn't comment on the denied claim.
Back at the sinkhole, Coffey says full restoration of the intersection should be complete by mid-October. "We've got a lot of sidewalk work and curb to replace and pave the road so we're probably out there another couple of weeks before we get everything done."
Coffey hopes to South Lake Avenue will be fully re-opened on Columbus Day, Monday, October 10. City officials estimate the cost for fixing the hole at about $1 million.
