Sewer Line Repaired At Laurelhurst Elementary After Backing Up Onto Playground

 

District workmen on playground



Laurelhurst Elementary School recently had a sewer back-up right onto the west side of the South Playground near the basketball courts, close to the corner of NE 45th Street and 46th Avenue NE.

Over the last several months, several areas of the playground were filled with water resulting in large puddles.  The drains did not let the water pass through to allow the water to go down and clear the water from the playground.

Over time, the standing water in one particular large puddle, started smelling of sewage and human waste matter was clearly visible, the Laurelhurst Blog staff was told.

"Finally District workmen showed up and began to try and drain the area" one parent said. "It is unclear why it took so long," he added.

After about two weeks of work and repairs, digging up several areas of the playground and replacing some pipes that had damage, the drains are now once again working and there are no more puddles.

The areas on the playground that were opened up were patched back up with a mixture of rocks and dirt.  About a week ago, the workmen returned covering the gravel like material with asphalt.  

Here are several emails the Blog Staff received:

It is unclear why the Principal took so long to have this matter taken care of. The puddles had been there for months. And it would seem that employees reported it to the Administration, but nothing appeared to happen, until the sewer backed up. It was then workmen were called to look into the underlying problem with the pipes. All the while, students were playing in that area.

Perhaps if the source of the standing water had been looked into when it first started showing up, the work would not have been so extensive and costly to the School and District. 

We count on our School Administration, especially the Principal, to keep our neighbohorod playground healthy and safe and attend to issues in a timely manner, before a child could potentially become ill, in this case from the harmful standing water.  

Finally the really foul smell is gone now and the constant standing water. The smell was extremely strong not only at the playground but in surrounding areas outside of the school.   

Thank you to all the workmen who came out to our school to repair the issue and once again make the entire playground useable for our kids. 

We hope the School Principal will take action quickly when an issue arises so that grave situations like this won't happen again.

It really seemed like a health hazard to have kids playing in and near the large puddles for so long without any attention to this critical issue. What if someone fell in the toxic puddles? Not only do school students use the playground, but the neighborhood at large and we assume there are no health issues.