The welding is done. The street is not.
Crews replacing a failed section of the trunk line that flooded West Hollywood have finished welding a new 25-foot length of pipe into place and moved into testing, according to ABC7. The 36-inch riveted steel main dates from around 1916 and burst at Sunset Boulevard and Holloway Drive at about 3 a.m. Thursday, releasing roughly 17 million gallons.
What still has to happen
Testing is not a formality on a drinking water main. The new section has to be pressurized and checked for leaks, then flushed and disinfected with chlorine, then sampled and cleared before it can carry water to customers. Only after that can the trench be backfilled and the street repaved.
That sequence is why a repair that looks finished from the sidewalk is not. LADWP's original target of completing over the weekend appears to be slipping into the working week, and no firm reopening time has been given. Sunset remains closed between Sherburne Drive and San Vicente Boulevard, with other nearby streets also shut.
Water quality and service
LADWP says drinking water remains safe. Some buildings near the work are seeing low pressure, and the utility has asked people in the area to conserve while the repair is under way.
At least two residential buildings are without both water and power. Some residents have been out of their homes for days, and ground-floor units took the worst of it, with damage that in places will mean pulling out walls and flooring before anyone moves back in.
Filing a claim
Damage from a city main is a claim against the utility. LADWP is directing residents and businesses to file at ladwp.com/claims.
What helps a claim, in roughly the order it matters: photographs and video taken before anything is cleaned up, including water lines on walls; retention of damaged property until it has been inspected; a written log of dates, including when the water arrived and when you first reported it; receipts for hotels, meals and emergency repairs; and written estimates rather than verbal ones. If there is structural damage, get a licensed contractor or engineer to document it before repairs begin.
The distinction that decides who pays is whose pipe failed. This was a municipal trunk line, so the claim runs to LADWP. A failure on private property is a matter for the owner and their insurer, which is the situation some Venice residents are in after two separate pipe failures there on Saturday.
The age problem
The pipe that failed here is about 110 years old. In Venice on Saturday, a contractor at one of the flooded properties attributed the failures there to infrastructure he estimated at a similar age. That is his assessment rather than a finding by the utility, and the two events are unrelated incidents in different jurisdictions.
What is documented is LADWP's own view of this particular line. The utility has a full replacement of nearly 10 miles of this pipeline scheduled to begin in 2031 and finish in 2035.
That is a reasonable capital plan and it is also five years away from starting. A system built largely in the early twentieth century is being replaced on a schedule set by what a utility can afford and physically execute, and in the interim the failures are effectively unscheduled. Thursday's break is what that interim looks like.
