The world famous Sunset strip resembles a river after water main break http://t.co/qfwq5kF6BN pic.twitter.com/o6VtJ3PVPL
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) September 26, 2014
In the wake of one seriously muddy flood along the Sunset Strip late last month, it's come to light that the LADWP is planning to replace about four miles of pipe along Sunset Boulevard over the next four years. Most water mains in LA are only on schedule to be replaced every 300 years (seriously!); it's not clear how old these four miles are, but the pipe that burst was only about 100 years old. According to WeHoville, the chair of the West Hollywood Neighborhood Heights Association contacted the city agency worried that construction on the Sunset|LaCienega megaproject had somehow caused the break. Not so!
Turns out, it was good old-fashioned corrosion that was to blame: "The pipe in question is a roughly 100-year-old riveted steel pipe. When one of the rivets goes, it will usually zipper open, popping out other rivets," the engineering manager said in his email, and the result is the messy flood and the loss of about two million gallons of water that we saw last month. (Compared to the 28 million gallons lost when UCLA flooded from a ruptured pipe, it's not so bad!)
The section that stands to be swapped out will start at Fairfax and end at Beverly Hills, and had been in line for replacement when the high-profile waterworks started up. There's no date mentioned for the start of the replacement project, so we still might see a few more impromptu waterways along Sunset before work is done.
· LADWP Reveals Plans to Replace Sunset Blvd. Water Pipes [WeHoville]
· 14 Craziest Photos and Videos From Today's Sunset Strip Flood [Curbed LA]
· How LADWP Shut Off the Gushing Water Main at UCLA [Curbed LA]
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