Baker Court leak got lost in the shuffle

Even in the midst of a drought, the folks on Baker Court have had more excess water than they’d care for.

Baker Court is a very short cul-de-sac off Baker Circle, which is off Benning Road near Arbor Pointe, which used to be Baker Village. Just at the mouth of the street and almost on Baker Circle, water has been bubbling up from the ground for a while now, months maybe.

One of the residents there called the Water Works, and they sent a crew out to investigate, but then nothing happened. So she called me, or actually she told a co-worker, who passed the problem along to me.

We’ve had a variety of water leak problems in this column over the years, and they’re not always the Water Works’ problem. Take, for example, the time we investigated a leak in front of the Hughston Clinic, which was keeping the sidewalk there on Veterans Parkway wet and muddy. That turned out to be a leaking landscape sprinkler, which was soon fixed by the landscaping company.

Then there was the perpetually wet Wynn Hill, which turned out to be a natural spring. There’s nothing the Water Works can do about that, unless they want to put it on the prayer list at church.

There have been others, but this one is apparently a Water Works problem.

After driving over to see the leak and shoot a photo, I called Jeremy Cummings, the field services manager for the Water Works and he checked into it.

He initially said their people had just repaired a leak on Baker Circle the day before (which would have been last Thursday). Well, I said, I went out there on Friday morning and the thing was still burbling away, and there was an orange and white barrel marking the spot.

He said he’d do more checking.

As it turns out, a crew had been sent out there to investigate the leak in September and they had reported it back to the office. But then some kind of snafu occurred. When a computer should have generated an automatic work order, it didn’t. So it went unrepaired, residing on a back burner somewhere.

We here at Inquirer Central can empathize, as we have a plethora of back burners on which we store most of our work.

But Cummings assured me that the Baker Court work order was being generated as we spoke and that a crew would be out there, possibly as you read this on Monday morning.

Thanks, Jeremy. Now, could y’all do something about this leaky faucet my wife has been on me about?

Seen something that needs attention? Contact me at 706-571-8570 or mowen@ledger-enquirer.com.

This story was originally published October 16, 2016 at 4:42 PM with the headline "Baker Court leak got lost in the shuffle."