After publishing a story about a water leak gushing up in a Northeast Baltimore street despite resident complaints for six weeks straight, we’ve come across an apparently similar, but in many ways more severe, situation.

Water is cascading out of a window in the back of midtown’s Copycat Building has been flowing continuously, despite numerous complaints to the city, and has been for six months or more.

“It’s been going on since before the school year started back in September,” said a staff member at the Baltimore Design School, which shares an alley with the Copycat at 1501 Guilford Avenue.

The staffer said fellow employees who were present at the city public school over the summer described seeing the firehose-strength water flow as early as last July.

Speaking with The Brew, the staffer described putting in a 311 complaint to the city soon after school started last fall and another a month later, only to find out that others in the school community had put in 311 complaints as well.

Still the water continued to gush.

The Brew checked out this urban waterfall earlier this week and watched it tumble onto the street pavers and then burble down the alley through bits of scattered trash.

Some young people who appeared to be Design School students tromped right through the stream, while others skirted along the side of it.

“When it was really cold, it was a flow of water going down the middle of the alley, with a sheet of ice for like five feet on either side of that,” the staffer recalled.

At the end of alley, where it comes to Oliver Street, there’s a blue dumpster sitting on top of a drain where the water drops down and disappears, most likely into the subterranean Jones Falls.

Problems are developing there, too.

“There seems to be sinkholes forming in the alley and under the dumpster,” said the staffer, noting that people who park there and exit through the alley often can’t get through because the dumpster is blocking their way.

The situation puzzles and concerns those who have been co-existing with this urban river on a daily basis.

“I don’t even know how to estimate how much water is being billed there with just a steady flow of water coming out like that for a half a year, maybe a year.”

Who’s Responsible?

The Brew asked city officials that question in search of an explanation for how the situation developed, and why it has been allowed to go on so long.

• Is the leak the responsibility of the property owner?

• Could a rupture in a city water pipe be contributing to the problem?

• Either way, why haven’t the numerous 311 reports over many months prompted the city to get the problem corrected?

• And, finally, is somebody paying for all this wasted water?

Representatives of the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) said they are researching the matter and have no comment.

• Q&A with DPW about the broken water line at the North Ave. CSX bridge (10/28/21)

The Brew also reached out to the building’s owner, The Copycat Building LLC.

We were unable to reach owner Charles Lankford or his son, John Brice Lankford, who is listed as the LLC’s registered agent.

A former manufacturing warehouse built in the 1890s that came to be a celebrated artists’ studio and living space, the building was the center of a landlord tenant conflict during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite moratoria in effect at the time, Lankford attempted to remove a number of tenants in arrears by refusing to renew month-to-month leases.

Because the Copycat lacked legally required licensing, tenants and their advocates challenged Lankford.

A lower court ruled in the tenants’ favor, but the Maryland Court of Appeals ultimately sided with Lankford.

Among our questions yet unanswered by DHCD:

What is the status of the housing violations for the property currently listed on the city’s online Code Map?