Inquirer: Muddy problem on Veterans Parkway comes from spring

A nice lady, though she uses colorful language, called to complain about a situation that almost ruined her shoes.

"Mr. Owen, there's a bad problem on Veterans Parkway "

No kidding.

"It's a big ol' patch of mud and dirt on the sidewalk just north of Talbotton Road. I was walking there today and I almost ruined a really nice pair of shoes walking through the mud. Almost as bad, I slipped once and almost busted my "

Whoa now, lady. This is a family publication. But I'll look into it.

I wanted to ask the lady what she was doing walking in a nice pair of shoes in that neighborhood, but she'd already hung up.

So I drove out Veterans, past Talbotton and immediately saw that the lady wasn't lying. Cussing, but not lying.

I parked for a minute or two in a parking lot that has a sign that says "No Parking, Cars will be towed at owner's expense" and walked a few paces until I got to the patches Madam Potty Mouth was talking about. There are several stretches of thick mud, spots with dried dirt and one spot where gravel has obviously washed down the steep hill onto the sidewalk.

And there's no safe way around it, because traffic on that stretch of Veterans is roaring over a slight hill, so drivers might not see pedestrians veering out into the street to avoid the mud. Besides, they're probably texting anyway.

In addition to the mud, there was some water flowing down the gutter. There hasn't been much rain lately, so it's not that. So the root cause might be a Water Works issue. Or not. Who besides the Water Works works with water, you ask? That would be God.

Veteran Readers will remember a couple of years ago when an Alert Reader called in a perpetual water leak on Wynn Hill across from the Columbus Museum. I called the Water Works, and they sent a crew out to test the water, which turned out not to have any chlorine in it. Since all their water is treated, the water, which still flows periodically down Wynn Hill, comes from a natural spring there.

But regardless of the root cause, the cleanup on Veterans Parkway would likely be a city problem, and that would be a Public Works problem, and that means a call to Pat Biegler, the director.

Pat said she would look into it and get back to me, which she did and guess what. It's Wynn Hill all over again.

"It's either groundwater or a spring," Biegler said. "We have to go over and clean it up periodically. We're sending a crew over there to clean it up again."

She also advised that if citizens see the problem recur, they should report it to 311. But don't cuss at them.

This story was originally published November 2, 2014 at 9:57 PM with the headline "Inquirer: Muddy problem on Veterans Parkway comes from spring."