The Morning News/Neighbors Go reports on the construction delays at Irving’s newest public library due to water from an unknown source pouring into the site:
The city had planned on some groundwater. Planners designed the library’s basement, which is meant mostly for book storage, with waterproof seals and sump pumps.
But the contractor reported five times as much water as the city’s tests had predicted.
“It sounded like it was an underground river,” Tate told the Irving Public Library Board last week.
He wasn’t kidding. City staff even scoured satellite photos for signs that a creek might once have wound through the construction site, but found none.
A more obvious suspect was a broken water main. City crews located one next to the site, but the pit didn’t dry out after they fixed it.
Next, Tate turned his eye to the pond next door in Centennial Park. Perhaps it was seeping under the soil.
“We lowered the pond and the water in the hole got deeper,” he told the board.
So the city switched off nearby Millennium Fountain for a week and a half, hoping that might dry things out. But the fountain in the pit kept spewing forth.
City staff went so far as to analyze the water’s chemistry to track its source, but still have no solid leads.
The article states that a city staffer suspects the contractor might be exaggerating the extent of the problem (which could cost a quarter-million dollars to fix), but I’m concerned about another possible explanation. How sure are we that isn’t the location of some old, unmarked burial ground? We know what kind of problems that could pose.
The water could be a warning.
