A Rant on Bureaucracy and Citizen Expectations; A Record Wait

The western entrance to the alley behind my house has just been re-opened after having been closed since October. Yes, October. What happened, and what took them nearly a half a year to fix? Well, it seems that they managed to either find or break a leaking pipe while "fixing" the road at which the alley debouches. This was a hitherto-unknown 48" pipe. We are not talking about a tiny little pipe here, folks.

It's hard to believe that a pipe of such magnitude could be unknown to WASA. Surely, they should have known about it, given that it must be a working pipe. We know that, of course, because it was leaking. Okay, so they broke an unknown, working 48'' pipe. Not starting off well. It doesn't get better.

Why didn't they fix it right away? They said there was no money in the budget. Because this isn't exactly the first time that a hitherto-unknown pipe has been broken while a DC street is being fixed (uh oh, I used the wrong word - "fixed" doesn't seem to be the operating reality here) let's say "worked on", wouldn't they place a certain amount in the budget for, let's call them "contingencies"? Wouldn't that be good planning? I guess not.

And given that they had stalled working on it since last October, wouldn't you think that people in the community, possibly people with rear access to their dwelling places on that very alley might have noticed with some displeasure that the situation wasn't getting fixed and demanded a meeting to find out why and to call for swift action? It's a no-brainer that the surest way to encourage severel outrage on the part of an affected community is to ignore it.

In fact, more than four months after the alley was closed, a meeting finally took place and WASA's top brass came. Does it matter that the top brass didn't seem to know the area to begin with, and then compounded this error by putting up an incorrect slide which indicated that "everything" had already been done between Mass. Avenue and S Street? This writer and the rest of the audience thought so. Theoretically, "everything" would include the alley entrance, but that of course, was the reason for the meeting. The audience, wasn't pleased, as a reader might well imagine. WASA finally brought the meeting to a close by promising that it would fix the problem and re-open the alley entrance within two weeks.

At the very end of two weeks, the alley re-opened to great rejoicing. The rejoicing was destined to last only a hot moment, unfortunately.

We had been tricked once again! Within the WEEK , the very area where the alley opened onto 18th and New Hampshire is ONCE MORE is being torn up - this time for electrical conduit problems. At the meeting with WASA, the residents ask if any work by any road-ripping entity might happen any time soon that would cause the area to be torn up once again ? Of course they did. And WASA's answer - of course - was no. It took less than a week for WASA's answer to be nullified once again, and for the orange bumpers and jackhammers to reappear. They're still there.

Is there ANYONE competent out there guarding our streets? Apparently, the correct answer to this not-so-difficult question is - of course not.