Sunset Boulevard will be open Saturday after the completion of repairs to a 3-foot-wide water trunk line that ruptured last week underneath the road and flooded a West Hollywood neighborhood, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
The department will remove crews from the repair site at some point overnight, while the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department will lift street closures on Sunset Boulevard between Sherbourne Drive and San Vicente Boulevard and restore driving access on surrounding streets, officials said in a statement Friday night.
Around-the-clock emergency repairs enabled the reopening of the vital traffic corridor, but the paving currently in place is temporary, the Department of Water and Power said Friday. Crews will return in the coming weeks to lay down permanent paving and officials will inform residents of upcoming lane closures required to complete the remaining work.
Earlier in the week, as crews were finalizing roadwork, they discovered a pinhole-sized leak in a pipe, temporarily pausing street repairs.
“While compacting the concrete aggregate base in advance of final street resurfacing, water began to pool at the surface toward the eastern edge of the work area,” the utility said in a news release.
On Thursday, workers excavated a 3-foot-by-4-foot area to find the source of the water, plugged the leak and resumed preparing the street to reopen. It is not clear what caused the second rupture.
“With welding complete, [Los Angeles Department of Water and Power] crews will begin slowly refilling and repressurizing the pipe while closely monitoring for any issues before backfilling and temporarily repaving the area as part of our emergency response,” the utility said in a Thursday night update.
Last week’s trunk line break, which sent a river of water through the streets of West Hollywood, was on a riveted steel pipe from 1916 that is part of the system of major arteries that deliver water from reservoirs and tanks to smaller distribution mainlines across Los Angeles.
About 547 miles of trunk line run underground across the city, much of which is nearing the end of its useful life and will need to be replaced in the coming years.
In response to the Sunset Boulevard crisis, the DWP plans to accelerate the replacement of the West Hollywood trunk line, a project that was previously scheduled to start in 2031. Construction is expected to span four years and will require detailed traffic management planning and coordination with neighbors and businesses, according to the department.
“The West Hollywood community has shown remarkable patience and resilience throughout this challenging week,” David Hanson, the department’s interim general manager, said in a Friday evening statement, “and as we move forward, we are committed to accelerating the full replacement of the trunk line and collaborating closely with our agency and city partners to deliver enhanced infrastructure and reliability.”