Lakewood Sewer Repair To Close Steilacoom Boulevard All Next Week

LAKEWOOD, WA — The City of Lakewood confirms its emergency sewer repair project will shut down a portion of Steilacoom Boulevard all next week.

Starting Monday, Steilacoom Boulevard will be closed between Lakewood Drive and Gravelly Lake Drive. If all goes according to plan, the road should reopen Saturday, Sept. 4. During the closure, east-west traffic will be rerouted onto Lakewood Drive, Custer Road, and Bridgeport Way, the city said.

The City of Lakewood has shared a map, shown below, which helps explain how some of those detours will look:

Next week's sewer repair closure will likely need to be followed by a second repair project some time in the future, the start date of which is undetermined.

Both projects are necessary to fix the damage caused by a July 20 sewer main break underneath Steilacoom Boulevard. The main break had the city warning residents not to flush their toilets for the night, though investigators have since determined that there were no service disruptions due to the break, and no impact on nearby drinking water or toilets.

However, the break did cause wastewater to spill out onto the road. From there, some of the sewage seeped into nearby Flett Creek, which carried the waste out into Chambers Bay. As a result, beaches at Sunnyside Beach Park, Chambers Creek Regional Park, Kobayashi Park, Chamber Bay Park, and the public access points at Chambers Creek Canyon were closed to the public. The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department lifted those closures Friday.

The City of Lakewood says the traffic project aims to prevent similar spillages from happening again.