More water!

We had a frustrating week trying to excavate in front of 18 Fleet Street. On Wednesday we removed the brick sidewalk we uncovered the previous week. Directly below this we found what was most likely another fill layer that contained a variety of small artifacts. We excavated only a few inches through this layer and then we were completely overwhelmed by water. We seem to have hit a spring about 2 feet below the current sidewalk level. Water was pouring into the unit as quickly as we could pump the water out. The surface of the excavation was completely saturated with a few inches of water on top making it impossible to excavate by stratigraphic level. We decided to dig a hole about a foot and a half deep in the corner of the unit to create a place for the water to drain. We still had to pump out the unit continually but it did help to dry out the top layer of the excavation a bit.

We were pumping out around 15 to 20 gallons of water per hour from the unit. With all of this water comes a lot of sediment which cannot be dumped into a storm drain. In addition, Annapolis has very little permeable surface meaning that most of the ground in Annapolis is covered in materials like concrete or brick which do no absorb water. Unfortunately, there was no way for us to dispose of all the water coming out of the unit and we were unable to continue excavating. Our project supervisors are working with the Department of Public Works to come up with an acceptable way to dispose of the water. This project was suppose to end yesterday but it looks like we will be extending the project a couple days. Hopefully we will be able to open this unit again on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Check back for updates!