Patients at D.C.’s St. Elizabeths Hospital have endured five on-campus water-main breaks this winter, including one that knocked out water to the entire campus for eight hours and forced facility administrators to bring in portable toilets.
The infrastructure beneath the century-old psychiatric hospital in Southeast is failing more frequently this year, nearly tapping out the hospital’s maintenance contingency fund for fiscal 2008, said Patrick Canavan, St. Elizabeths’ chief operating officer.
“It’s been uncomfortable certainly and I don’t like the situation, but we’re doing the best we can,” Canavan said. “It’s a 100-year-old building, and at 100 years in the ground these things wear out.”
The worst of the breaks occurred two weeks ago, when a 14-inch water main failed, leaving the entire campus and some 400 patients without running water for eight hours. Portajohns were trucked in, and patients were provided moist towelettes while they waited, Canavan said.
Most of the other breaks involved 6- and 8-inch mains and affected smaller portions of the campus. The ruptures are the responsibility of the District government to repair, not the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.
“They’re not problems you can fix ahead of time,” Canavan said. “With a 60- to 100-year water main system, you simply try to replace it as soon as you can, which is what we’re trying to do by building a new hospital.”
The District is building a $140 million replacement for St. Elizabeths, but it will not open until at least 2009.
D.C. activist Valencia Mohammed, the mother of a St. Elizabeths patient, called on D.C. leaders to take action now.
“Why couldn’t the patients be moved to a more decent facility?” Mohammed asked of the D.C. Council in a recent e-mail. “It amazes me how the Council and mayor brag about surplus and reform of the government when mental patients are subjected to horrendous conditions.”
A 2006 investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found that the hospital’s physical plant “is in a state of severe deterioration and serious dilapidation.” The facility “fails to provide patients with a safe living environment,” the report concluded.
