The first time it happened, Wyatt Early considered booking a stay at a local hotel instead of remaining at his Pikesville home.
For nearly a week in late July, Early’s home had frustratingly low water pressure. Turning on the faucet yielded only a trickle.
“It was a pain in the butt to even fill up your dog’s water bowl,” said Early, a 29-year-old living in the Sudbrook Park community with his girlfriend and three dogs.
Since then, the issue has cropped up several more times — all without warning — Early said, including earlier this week, when the pressure was low for most of the day Wednesday before it came back later that evening.
Baltimore County officials blame an ongoing project to replace 8,600 feet of an aged water main on nearby Reisterstown Road, in between Interstate 695 and Irving Place. But Early and other residents say they weren’t notified about the project, or its potential to impact their water service. And the outages keep occurring despite phone calls to city and county officials.
The Randallstown chapter of the NAACP said earlier this week that the problems have affected more communities than Sudbrook Park.
The NAACP said it has received about 100 complaints of low water pressure over the past three weeks from residents in Pikesville, Milford Mill and Owings Mills. At one point, homes on one block of Windsor Mill Road in the Woodlawn area lost water entirely, according to the NAACP.
“There’s absolutely no notice at all for people to be able to prepare that they might not have any water, or low water pressure,” said Ryan Coleman, president of the Randallstown NAACP.
Ron Snyder, spokesperson for Baltimore County’s Department of Public Works and Transportation, said that there was no notice to residents Wednesday because the low pressure was an unexpected side effect of work being done to replace the water main. Water service was restored by 7 p.m., Snyder said.
The outage along Windsor Mill Road occurred due to an emergency water main repair, which was completed by a Baltimore City DPW contractor, said agency spokesperson Jennifer Combs.
“DPW’s primary priority during emergency repairs is to restore water service as quickly as possible,” Combs wrote in a statement. “To expedite this process, advance notification to customers is not provided for emergency repairs.”
The $11.9 million replacement main project on Reisterstown Road began last summer, Snyder said, and is about 85% complete. Crews work from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, Snyder said.
“There’s underground water lines that are decades old that need to be repaired and replaced and unfortunately there are times when water pressure may be affected,” Snyder said.
The county endeavors to keep such instances to a minimum, and to notify residents when problems may arise, Snyder said. The county held an information session about the water main project in June 2023 at the Pikesville Library, he said.
On Friday, the county issued a news release warning residents in the Owings Mills area, who also received flyers this week, that they could experience low water pressure or disruption of water service this weekend due to another water main replacement project on a different section of Reisterstown Road, between Pleasant Hill Road and Stockdale Avenue. That work will occur Friday at 9 p.m. until Saturday at 5 a.m., according to the news release.
Glyndon, Reisterstown & Owings Mills! You may experience low water pressure or brief service disruptions from 9 PM Fri, Aug. 23 to 5 AM Sat, Aug. 24 as part of an $11M water main upgrade. 💧
If you're experiencing any interruptions visit https://t.co/bK2oneALgJ) pic.twitter.com/jcjfUEFmjd
— Baltimore County Public Works and Transportation (@BaltCoDPWT) August 23, 2024
Pikesville resident Diane Davison said she also has experienced repeated instances of low water pressure dating back to July 22, making daily tasks like flushing the toilet and taking a shower considerably more difficult for days at a time. But the most frustrating part has been the lack of warning, she said.
“They could put flyers out. They could ask for an email list. They could put up signs in the neighborhood,” Davison said. “Going out for a couple hours a day is understandable. But not when it’s days on end — and unforeseen.”
On a neighborhood Facebook group, residents have commiserated about the incidents, and their efforts to get more information from officials, often unsuccessfully, Davison said. Initially, some residents called the city’s 311 phone line to report outages and request information, Davison said.
The city handles water service to the county, but Baltimore County’s public works department largely handles water main replacement in the county.
To Coleman, the issues — and the confusion between city and county — highlight the importance of changing how the area’s water system is governed, perhaps creating a regional structure.
“The quality of life cannot be impacted like this, and it’s difficult dealing with at times,” Coleman said.
Last year, a task force convened by the General Assembly considered the governance of the water system. In its final report in January, the task force stated that the idea of a regional water authority, allowing the city and county to manage the system collaboratively, “shows promise,” but further study would be needed, particularly to calculate its financial cost.
Legislation passed in the General Assembly this year established a new workgroup, tasked with developing an equity analysis, a financial transition plan and a workforce analysis for transitioning to a regional governance model for Baltimore’s water system, with a deadline of June 30, 2027.
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