Neighbors demand answers over alleged 7-month-long Essex water leak

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WBFF) — A water leak in Essex has reportedly been flowing all day, every day, for seven long months now — but neighbors say their repeated complaints to Baltimore City have gone unanswered.

The neighborhood located along the 1600 block of Frenchs Avenue sits in Baltimore County, but its water system is operated by the city.

Resident Mark Lusby says water has been bubbling through the pavement near his home since at least February. When temperatures dropped, Lusby says what had been an ongoing nuisance became downright dangerous, freezing over and turning the street into an ice rink.

“We have people that park on the street to get kids out and had to walk across all that ice in the winter and everything, or even just deal with this stinky smell all year long,” he said.

And just like the water, Lusby says his complaints to the city have been constant.

“I have over 40 pages of responses with them, emails, phone calls, continuously,” he said. “I think it’s that DPW is inefficient. I wholeheartedly believe that the county would have had this problem fixed if they, if it was their responsibility.

FOX45 reviewed several of those 311 complaints, including one filed in February that was closed out the same day. Another filed in June saw the same outcome, despite the leak continuing.

Lusby also claims that at one point a city worker did come out to assess the leak in person. “They said, ‘Yes, we see there’s a leak. We’ll get out and fix it in a week,’ and then they just never came back,” he said.

Seven months later, Lusby says he’s mostly concerned about the amount of water being wasted and fears the leak will still be flowing when temperatures drop again this winter.

“I mean, there’s got to be hundreds of thousands of gallons of water going down to the creek,” he said. “Please fix this leak so we don’t have to go through another winter again. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

FOX45 sent questions to Baltimore City’s Department of Public Works, asking where the water is coming from, how much may have been lost, why the 311 complaints were closed, and why the problem has gone unresolved for months.

As of Friday afternoon, DPW has not responded.