Around noon today, downtown San Francisco sprung a leak when underground construction of Muni's Central Subway apparently broke a water main below street level. (See update below)
A tiny spurt of water was seen bubbling up on Stockton Street near the mouth of the Stockton Tunnel, prompting the fire department to close the tunnel connecting Chinatown and Union Square. There's some concern that the water could damage some of the underground construction as well as the surface of Stockton and Sutter Streets, but in a statement the Public Utilities Commission said there were no reported water outages in the neighborhood.
The Stockton Tunnel is currently closed to all vehicular traffic, except for MUNI vehicles.
The Central Subway, which has its own blog, will be an extension of the T-Third line that runs from 4th and King Streets to Chinatown. (And possibly North Beach or Fisherman's Wharf, depending on how badly the neighbors want to fight it off.) Construction of the Union Square station is currently underway a few blocks south on Stockton between Geary and Ellis.
Update, 3:15 p.m.: According to a second notice sent out by SFPUC, the the ruptured pipe was a small 4-inch main that has been in service since 1914 and the break is more likely related to the pipe's advanced age rather than the Central Subway project. So KPIX may have jumped the gun a bit on that one.
[CBS5]
[Central Subway]
