Water Main Break on Milpas Street

City workers have been working tirelessly since about nine Monday morning on a broken water main. Santa Barbara’s aging underground pipe system on Milpas Street finally gave out spilling gallons of dirty water onto the streets and surrounding neighborhoods, flooding the intersection of Cota and Milpas streets. The mean break was so intense that some people thought it was an earthquake. The violent episode even lifted part of the newly paved street, and sidewalks were left with thick mud that city workers had to clean up.

Some business were affected like Prestige Auto car wash, when the water was turned off. With no water, Prestige was forced to close for the day. A bulldozer was dispatched to the scene to help with the cleanup. Once the workers had the upper hand, they dug up an enormous hole on the street in order to reach the underground water pipe to repair it. Working into the late evening hours, workers were finally working on restoring water to the nearby businesses, and they still had plenty of work left to do. Not only do they have to fill that massive man-made whole on the street after the repairs, but they need to repave that stretch of Milpas Street once again.

Today’s incident caused quite an ordeal with a lot of frustrated drivers trying to navigate around the street closures. Expect more delays in the coming days ahead as repairs and cleanup to the damaged eastside streets continues.