It's Monday, September 19th. This is the day that North 4th Springs is scheduled to shut down. At around 8 a.m., work on the needed repair commenced. Over by the source of the water is a dump truck, an end loader, and a truckload full of digging equipment. The spring is no longer active. The pools of water downstream from it are drying up on this sunny day. Where the spring once was, there's a big hole that was dug out by the end loader to enable the 6 man crew to get to the pipes and make repairs. Here's what the hole looked like at about 9:45.

A couple of the guys are stretching out the copper tube that will be needed. They'll be up and down the ladder a few times. Here's what the hole looks like with a couple of workers in it.

The folks from the city said they would be taking care of this today. And they did. Thanks to the City of DeKalb for getting the job done and to the workers for letting me get close enough to take these pictures.

It is just about sunset on the day that North 4th Springs was scheduled to have something done. So, by now, you would think that it would be running dry. But a letter from Tim Holdeman tells me that there was a delay in all the needed preparations, so the Society for the Preservation of Our Pretty Little Spring gets another week to view and enjoy the spring before it dries up and goes away. Our picture today is from the south side of the Spring. It appears that the number of spouts has increased from four to six. The reflected white and gold of the sunset gives a nice little glow to the tops of the spouts. Enjoy!

While getting ready to practice with Ordinary Folk, Julie, the fiddle player, told me that she may send her sons over to try to float a couple of paper boats along the riverway from North 4th Springs to its delta at North 4th Sewer. Not having a photo in place today, I folded up and taped a square of paper about the size of a post-it note into a prototype. It wasn't a successful voyage because of the leave that block the flow of water at the surface. I think the river would have to be dredged to get the project to work properly. But here are a couple of boat images from the attempt.

And another in one of the little lakes behind another leaf dam.

Sailing Sailing, Over the bounding main.

It has been a little while since the North Fourth Springs did anything but sit in the middle of the sidewalk and leak. The story is the same and telling it again won't make it any different. Yesterday late morning was overcast, but the rain had taken a temporary halt. Lake Fourthpuddle is bounded by the set of concrete blocks. The barrier still sits in the grass off the sidewalk. I don't know what good it does there, but that's where it is. This view looks east across Lake Fourthpuddle to the North 4th Spring which you can see in the view under the barricade. The ground is really soggy and will stay that way for a while.

Got some news from the city yesterday. When I posted the Facebook link to the blog, DK shared it with his public list and it made it to the city water department. Tim Holdeman of the water department informed DK that the city knew about the leak and that the property owner is responsible to fix it. The city has to give the property owner two weeks to get it repaired before stepping in to do whatever it is they do. The two weeks will be over on Monday, so the spring may cease to exist pretty soon. The news kept me from writing, but, if anybody was curious, it made sense for me to let the word out. So something happens about the Spring on 9/12.
Just so you have a picture from today, here's a 6:15 from west of the spring and lake and facing east. The shadows project out across the street as the sunny part of the day gets ready to come to its end.

Y'all come back now! Hear?

Still here and still leaking

Still here and still leaking.
Yesterday, I took an early morning photo of North Fourth Springs as viewed from the south about 3 minutes after sunrise. Unfortunately, it was so overcast at the time that we could see absolutely no shadows when they should have been near their longest. So this was all I could do to show that the spring is still active. Here's what I got.

Today, I took another pic at about 4:45 p.m. This one is from the northeast. The shadows are pretty long and extend out into the street. There's a pretty deep puddle (lake) just west of the spring. I don't usually pay much attention to the water running off to the west because it's uphill, and kind of slow. But it is where the lake is forming. DeKalb already has lagoons and ponds and a river. I'm not sure why it needs a spring-fed lake, but it appears to be getting one. The spout of water pointing toward the street is approaching a foot long. I expect the flow rate is going up. Here's what it looks like today:

As you can see, we continue to be very water rich here on north Fourth. That's the news from north Fourth Springs. Ya'll come back now, hear? (bluegrass band breaks into Powdermilk Biscuit theme song)

Still Springing

This morning (9/6), I went out about ten minutes before sunrise to see how the North Fourth Spring was doing. It's still there - as pretty as ever. The first full workday after the labor day holiday came and went along with the 1500 or so gallons of water that drained into the storm sewer. The raccoons that live in the storm sewer have a ready source of fresh water.
Anyway, I took one picture from the east and one from the north.
View from east:

View from north:

If you look at the two photos, you will see that there are no shadows that you could use to tell them apart. Once the sun comes up, shadows start to appear. The shadow that extends northwestward will be the longest that it's going to be in just a few minutes. I'll try for a long shadow view soon. It looks as if I will have the opportunity since the spring will flow again tomorrow.
Ya'll come back now! Hear!  - JD Clampett

Monday, September 5th - Labor Day - around 5:20 p.m. We're moving into the late afternoon. The shadows are shifted to the other side of where they were in yesterday's images. The white HVAC van just out of the field of view casts a shadow far to its east as we can expect in late afternoon. The mount of water coming out of North Fourth Springs is about the same as yesterday. None of the surrounding infrastructure has yet collapsed. So tomorrow morning, some of the students on their way to Rosette Middle School will get to enjoy the morning's view of the pretty little fountain.
"Let it be known...
There is a fountain..."
That while it was made by the hands of men, wasn't quite what they had in mind.

As our children pass this by, may it be a fount of many blessings... like wet shoes and socks.

Sunday, Sept 4. Yesterday's images are taken in late summer. The sun is still in the northern hemisphere but is moving south at an ever increasing rate. At about 9:30 a.m., the sky was cloudy but not so much that the day was darkened. The background is still green on the grass. There are some trees turning brown and others that are already losing their leaves. The leak itself appears stable. The geysering effect only goes about 6-8 inches over the surface of the sidewalk. I don't have a good way of measuring the rate at which water is being wasted. Probably over a gallon each minute. I held a 6 oz. yogurt cup into the sewer where the water is lowing. It took about 3 second to fill. That's about 120 ounces in a minute, so pretty close to one gallon. We could probably sustain a small village on this wasted water. That's about 1440 gallons per day. It's a good thing that we're water rich. The average daily water use is around 100 gallons per person per day in America. So this little leak could sustain about four households. And it just keeps on bubbling. Here are yesterday's pictures.

Here are today's morning pictures taken at 7:45 a.m.

Well, that's the daily report from 4th street springs

An introduction to a little leak

Sep 3, 2016. A few weeks ago, a leak sprung up out of the sidewalk in the 700 block of North 4th Street in DeKalb Illinois. I walk by it at least twice a day. Hoping to let somebody know that they should fix the leak, I called the city water department. They sent out someone who looked at it. A few days later, I called again. They sent someone in a truck to look at it and to place a barricade near it. A few days later, I noticed my alderman walking his dog and said, "Mike, would you get a look at that leak?" I guess he did. Dave lives in the house from whose sidewalk the water is leaking. He's aware of it. He even demonstrated that the ground near the leak is getting soggy.

Now if the city is aware of the leak, and the resident is aware of he leak, there must be a good reason that nobody has fixed it. Here's what I think the reason is. Could it be that this is such a good looking leak, that it is being preserved for others to view? I thought of French Impressionist artist Claude Monet and of how his haystack images demonstrate that a mundane object can be seen in many different light conditions as a thing uniquely beautiful for the time and place in which it is captured. So, lest this have artistic merit, I promise, once a day, to photograph the leak and to add it to this blog. Now the world can know of the splendid leak that we sustain here in our city.

Here are three images captured in 2016, on the 2nd of September, at 4:07 p.m.

Bubbly water. Water that has been in our aquifers for millennia. Rolling down the street to the sewer so that it is deposited into the rivers to journey once again.