Pine Street between 46th and 47th has been closed to through traffic for days due to a water leak and a sinkhole. Residents reported the leak at the beginning of last week, and then a Water Department truck responding to the call fell in the sinkhole on Friday, Jan. 12.

The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) reports a significant increase in customer service calls in January 2018, which is causing a growing backlog. A lot of the calls are reports of water main breaks in the city. For comparison, in January 2017, there was a total of 117 water main breaks for the month. In the first 15 days of January 2018, some 176 water main breaks were reported. As of January 17, the Department still had 170 leak investigations outstanding.

“We are doing our best to get those assigned and inspected,” reads a PWD statement. “We have crews working at an almost 24/7 pace right now, and we are attempting to address each issue brought to our attention as quickly as we can.” 

The PWD call center is currently overwhelmed with incoming calls, with wait times averaging over two hours, so for the first time, and temporarily they will begin taking customer service requests via their social media accounts. Customers can send a direct message via Twitter or Facebook. PWD will be actively monitoring these pages for direct messages between the hours of 9:00 a.m. to midnight, 7 days a week until further notice.

Residents should also be aware that because of the number of leak reports, they may face wait times of 24 hours or more from the initiation of a complaint to the time an inspector arrives to do the initial inspection. Once a cause is determined, it could then be several days before PWD will have a crew available to make repairs to a broken water main, shut off a pipe to a vacant property, or turn off customer service lines that may be broken as well.